Malaysia Tourism and Trip.com signed a strategic partnership to promote Malaysia as a destination of choice for the Chinese outbound market, as the country builds toward the Visit Malaysia Year 2026 campaign.
Minister of Tourism, Dato Tiong was at hand to witness the signing ceremony between MOTAC and Trip.com Group, a Nasdaq listed travel platform.
Malaysia is actively building towards “Visit Malaysia Year 2026”, with target of 26.1 million international tourist arrivals and MYR97.6 billion in tourist expenditure. To this end, both parties will collaborate extensively to promote Malaysia as a tourism destination, utilising online and offline resources to craft customised outbound marketing campaigns, provide high-quality travel services to Chinese tourists, enhance user travel experiences, and actively promote the full recovery of Malaysia’s tourism industry.
As a start, Tourism Malaysia will appear on this evening’s Boss Live broadcast at 7.00pm to host the first-ever Malaysia-themed live event on the Trip.com’s Ctrip app, offering exclusive discounts and a wide range of travel products to users across the platform.
Following the introduction of the mutual visa exemption policy between China and Malaysia on 26 November 2023, Trip.com Group’s data showed that Malaysia-related searches increased by 96% compared to the previous week. With favourable policies from both countries and deepening cooperation, this collaboration is poised to seize the opportunity for extensive growth in bilateral tourism and cultural exchanges.
In 2022, Malaysia’s tourism industry contributed MYR251.5 billion to Malaysia’s gross domestic product (GDP). This constituted 14% of its GDP, making tourism the country’s third largest contributor. It also contributed 23.4% to Malaysia’s total workforce, with 3.61 million people employed in 2022.
