Musa Yusof – Director Domestic Marketing Division Tourism Malaysia

MUSA YUSOF : The ‘Cuti-Cuti Malaysia’ Campaign was first introduced on the 11th of September 1999 to stimulate the growth of the number of domestic tourists in our country. The main objective of this campaign is to encourage the locals to plan their vacation properly and this campaign was targetted to reverse the view of locals that vacationing is something unnecessary and a waste of time and money.

Other than that, this campaign is aimed at changing the ‘balik kampung’ (back to hometown) tradition into a tourism activity. This campaign was later rebranded to Zoom! Malaysia on 14th May 2008 and finally changed to ‘Cuti-Cuti 1Malaysia’ Campaign, in line with the 1Malaysia concept introduced by The Right Hon. Prime Minister, Dato’ Sri Haji Mohd. Najib bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak.

In promoting this campaign, the government issued a few directives that contribute towards the success of this campaign such as the provision of additional leave on the first and the third Saturday of every month to all public sector employees. The launch of the low-cost airline, AirAsia, on the 1st December 2001 also helped in boosting the domestic tourism industry. The peak of the growth of the domestic tourism industry was when the government declared five working days a week starting from 1st July 2005.

GTN : What are the channels used in promoting the domestic destinations to the target groups?

MUSA YUSOF: As I have mentioned in the previous answer, we have organised and participated in tourism exhibition nationwide in allowing the domestic travellers to buy holiday packages offered by the travel agencies. For those who have missed the last travel fair, we have printed a lot of ‘Cuti-Cuti 1Malaysia’ package brochures to be distributed to the public and the information about the domestic destinations is available at all 13 State Tourism Malaysia offices. There are 25 Tourism Information Centres scattered around the country for tourists’ convenience, apart from the Mobile Tourist Information Centre that are placed at all tourist spots.

Other than that, the public can access the information through the website, www.tourismmalaysia.gov.my and info line at 1 300 88 5050. Tourism Malaysia is also keeping up with the technology by setting up an account in Facebook (www.facebook.com/CutiCuti1Malaysia). For smart phone users, they are able to download applications such as Truly Asia and go2homestay.com that are compatible with iPhone, Android and Blackberry, also made available through the Tourism Malaysia website.

GTM : How far has the local tourism industry expanded in the last five years?

MUSA YUSOF : In 2007, Visit Malaysia Year was held – our country prepared to welcome many tourists by training 20,000 front-liners to improve the service quality through ‘Malaysia Welcomes the World’ programme, which as a result provided over a million job opportunities. Malaysia is now ranked as the 11th country that received most tourists in 2008 and 9th in the year 2009. Alhamdullillah, in 2010, the tourism industry has generated RM56.5 billion for the country, equivalent to contributing RM1 billion per week, chalking up 24.6 million tourist arrivals. Within the domestic segment, 115.5 million tourist arrivals and RM34.7 billion of tourism recepits were recorded.

Malaysia was also chosen by Lonely Planet as part of the list for Best in Travel 2010 and Best Value Destination 2010 and we also won second place as Best International Tourism Destination (2009 & 2010) by the Global Traveller Magazine (USA). Kuala Lumpur is now included as one of the 31 suggested tourist’s destinations in the world.

GTM : What are the weaknesses in the domestic tourism industry? How do we overcome these weaknesses?

MUSA YUSOF : When we are talking about domestic holiday destinations, most of us are still wondering where to go and what to do and a lot of the people are always looking forward to spend their holidays abroad, which they assume is reasonable and satisfying. Therefore, to counter this, we use strategies and channels to convey the message that within Malaysia itself there are countless interesting destinations that are value-for-money, even better than the ones abroad. There are still many destinations that are yet to be explored within the country and we are encouraging locals to plan and organise their holidays so that there will be no accommodation problems and traffic congestion.

We do receive complaints from tourists regarding the level of cleanliness at the holiday destinations. To resolve this matter, Ministry of Tourism has launched ‘1Malaysia Bersih, 1Malaysia Indah’ Campaign (1Malaysia Clean, 1Malaysia Green) on the 18th of July 2010 to create awareness among the public and products owners to improve the level of cleanliness at the respective destinations.