Malaysia will embark on a tourism marketing onslaught under the Visit Malaysia 2026 (VM2026) campaign by creating demand, increasing traffic and prioritizing target markets that form the strategic core. The campaign aims to attract 35.6 million tourists and generate RM147.1 billion (US$30.8 billion) in revenue.
Tourism Malaysia last week detailed its VM 2026 roadmap, saying key initiatives include a branding and marketing blitz, strategic partnerships for joint promotional/tactical campaigns, and market segmentation. Stated.
Tourism Malaysia will implement aggressive advertising campaigns, influencer marketing and engaging content creation across digital (70%) and traditional (30%) media platforms. It also plans to establish strategic partnerships with airlines, OTAs and land and sea border control companies in neighboring countries to facilitate tourist arrivals.
Key target markets are prioritized into three levels, with first-level priorities such as China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Australia. Second-level priorities include South Korea, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, and the United Kingdom, followed by Chinese Taipei and Germany in third-level priorities.
Emerging markets such as Pakistan and Bangladesh will also receive attention.
Meanwhile, tourism products and travel experiences can be tailored to niche areas such as nature-based tourism, experiential tourism, medical and wellness tourism, responsible tourism, luxury, weddings, Muslim-friendly, gastronomy, and leisure travel. become.
Mr Tiong King Singh, Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, said: “Our multi-faceted VM2026 strategy is a comprehensive strategy to raise Malaysia’s profile, increase access to destinations and improve tourism services. “We provide a framework for this.” Through focused efforts and strategic collaboration, we are confident that we can achieve our annual arrivals and revenue targets for VM 2026. ”
Tiong added that NTO will continue to work with industry stakeholders and international partners to refine and implement the VM2026 strategy and position Malaysia as a priority tourism destination in the region. Indeed, a meeting between Tourism Malaysia and industry stakeholders on April 30 led to the creation of a strategic plan to promote destinations supporting VM2026 to domestic and international markets.
Malaysia's notable tourism results in the first quarter of 2024 are promising. From January to March, Malaysia welcomed 5.8 million arrivals, an increase of 32.5% compared to the same period in 2023. The top 10 markets were Singapore, Indonesia, China, Thailand, Brunei, India, South Korea, the UK, Australia, and the Philippines. .
