Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Tourism Malaysia to give incentives to agents

CHENNAI: Tourism Malaysia in association with Malaysia Airlines has announced a ‘Special Incentive Scheme’ for the travel trade to encourage more corporate and leisure travellers to visit Malaysia.

A press release said the scheme is devised to stimulate the Indian agents to offer ‘Best of Malaysia’ with a value for money proposition for such travellers. The agents will have to register with Tourism Malaysia to avail themselves of the benefits of the scheme.

The scheme for travellers will be for 3 nights and 4 days for different destinations within Malaysia and would be operationalised from January 2009.

Agents in Tier-I cities will be offered an incentive of US $ 1,000 for consolidated bookings of minimum 500 people. Agents in Tier-II and Tier-III cities would get an incentive of US $ 500 for booking 200 passengers. Alternatively, the agents participating in the scheme can also explore other carriers in the region. Tourism Malaysia Director En.Zainuddin Abd Wahab told presspersons here on Saturday that India contributed to nearly 32 per cent tourist arrivals in the country. South India’s share in this was significant and 28 direct flights to Malaysia are operated from Chennai alone.

He said the new scheme laid special emphasis on Tier-II and Tier-III cities as these saw a rise in the number of people with higher disposable incomes. Noting that corporate travellers were abandoning travel plans in the wake of the global financial crisis, he said these incentives would help boost travel business again. He said corporate traveller would have enough flexibility to decide which aspect of their travel they would like to subsidise.

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