Indonesia targets Malaysian travellers

Indonesia’s tourism industry was out in force with a 100 strong delegation hoping to drum up business at the MATTA Travel Fair over the weekend.
Ministry of Tourism and Creativity Economy, director for international promotion, Nia Niscaya, who led the delegation, said Malaysia’s outbound travel market was a solid producer for Indonesia.
“We expect attendance at the fair will help us achieve our target of 1.5 million visits from Malaysia this year,” she explained in the packed Indonesia exhibition zone covering 24 booths at the show.
Around 10,000 consumers attended the show Friday and by lunchtime Saturday the five halls were packed with more than 20,000 consumers.
Indonesia dominated the ASEAN zone that was next to the Tourism Malaysia domestic travel area where there were more than 70 booths.
Fresh from visiting ITB Berlin, Ms Niscaya said the show would deliver considerable bookings for Bandung a popular destination with Malaysian travellers.
“Of course, Bali remains very important, but our strategy is to build tourism beyond Bali to emerging destinations and speciality tourism segments,” she said.
Last year, 1.2 million Malaysian booked holidays in Indonesia, but the target is to reach 1.5 million this year with a holiday spend of US$1,183 per trip.
“We have a very strong repeat market in Malaysia and one of our objectives at this year’s MATTA is to boost interest in emerging destinations while continuing to build on the popularity of Bali.”
But she admitted that Bali holidays were not the cheapest and that competitive pricing and the shopping opportunities of Bandung would help to boost travel from Malaysia.
“Airline connections too are very important and we are supporting all airlines that serve leisure destinations.”
She named Garuda, SilkAir and SQ, which serves 13 destinations in the country as key players driving the increase in bookings from Malaysia.
She also recognised the growing importance of Muslim travel, or Halal holidays, noting Malays were very comfortable with travel and services in Indonesia.
“We offer a travel experience is that is very comfortable for Muslim travellers,” she added noting it went beyond food requirements such as a halal kitchen to the entire experience.
Muslim tourism was specifically featured by tour companies at the show with sections of their booths prominently displaying specific destinations that offer Halal holidays.
On the exhibition floor, Malaysia’s leading tour companies were selling fair packages to Bali (three nights for M$319. A free-and-easy two-night tour to Bandung sold at at M$282, Jakarta for M$317 and Surabaya M$310. The highest priced package as a three-night free-and-easy tour to Medan and Lake Toba at M$653. The main competitors in ASEAN for two-night tours were Thailand’s Phuket (M$240), Cambodia’s Siem Reap (M$644) and Vietnam’s Hanoi and Halong bay (M$1,430). Th latter tour is four nights with two distinct destinations with a cruise on Halong Bay.
The MATTA Travel Fair closed Sunday evening with an estimated gate of 100,000 consumers and a spend on travel and airline tickets of around M$150 million.
Organised by the Malaysian Tour and Travel Association, the next MATTA show will be held at the PWTC in Kuala Lumpur in September.

Sourced: ttrweekly