Tourism Malaysia and Expedia Group, the world’s travel platform, recently announced two tourism collaborations that promises to support Malaysia’s domestic and international efforts to promote tourism to Malaysia in the coming years.
Aligned with Tourism Malaysia’s tourism promotion strategies, the first agreement is a Memorandum of Collaboration to promote Malaysia as an outstanding tourist destination by showcasing the country’s unique wonders, attractions and cultures; and support tourism industry digital innovation.
The second agreement will see both parties embark on an Expedia Media Solutions global campaign to promote inbound travel from Australia, Japan and the United States to Malaysia. The joint campaign will spotlight Malaysia’s hidden and unique tourist attractions, as well as promote the variety of accommodation to Expedia Group’s 750+ million monthly visitors globally.
This timely strategic collaboration will support Malaysia’s target of achieving 30 million tourist arrivals and RM100 billion in tourist spending, set for the Visit Malaysia 2020 campaign.
Executives representing both parties exchanged documents of mutual appreciation and support for a strategic partnership between Tourism Malaysia and Expedia Group in the presence of YB Datuk Mohamaddin Ketapi, the Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture Malaysia, Tourism Malaysia which was represented by the Director General, Datuk Musa Yusof and Mr. Greg Schulze, Senior Vice President, Commercial Strategy and Services Expedia Group.
Empowering Malaysia’s Local Travel SME’s
As part of the overall collaboration, Tourism Malaysia and Expedia Group will also launch a series of key workshops in Malaysia to foster tourism industry digital innovation. Workshops for local hotel partners will include ways to leverage the Expedia Group’s Partner Central platform to accelerate skills development and build revenue and hotel management capabilities among local SME hotels.
Expedia Group will also leverage its Expedia Partner Solutions network and technology to help both large and SME travel retailers in the offline travel industry to improve their technology capabilities and to become digital economy ready.
“Tourism is an important contributor to Malaysia’s economy, accounting for almost 14.9 percent of the GDP and 3.4 million jobs. As the world’s travel platform, Expedia Group is proud to be the first online travel tourism partner to Tourism Malaysia, connecting Malaysia’s tourism industry to millions of travellers in Expedia Group’s worldwide network,” said Mr Greg Schulze, Senior Vice President, Commercial Strategy and Services, Expedia Group.
Datuk Mohamadddin Ketapi added, “through sharing our travel insights, as well as joint capacity building, digital marketing and corporate responsibility efforts together with Expedia Group, we aim to be a force for good, especially in sharing the benefits of tourism with communities across Malaysian cities.”
“Today’s announcement highlights Tourism Malaysia’s commitment towards greater cooperation and close relationship with Expedia Group. We hope that Expedia Group will continue to play a key role in advancing Malaysia’s tourism ambitions to promote itself as a unique and culturally diverse tourist destination for travellers all around the world,” said Datuk Musa Yusof, the Director General of Tourism Malaysia.
