Will the Chinese tourists still visit Malaysia?

 

Sin Chew, 17 Mar., 2016

The drop in revenue from petroleum in Malaysia made tourism to become the main source of income for our economy. Last month the Deputy Prime Minister Zahid stressed revenue from tourism industries is the 6^th main income in our economy. For example in 2004, tourism and the related industries contributed to a sum of RM161billion.

In an exaggerated saying, to promote tourism we will have to depend heavily on Chinese tourists. Last year statistics showed that there were 1.3 million of Chinese tourists visited Malaysia. It was estimated that each of them spent RM3, 345 here. If we are successful in attracting 8 million Chinese tourists, it will bring in RM26.7 billion revenue to the country.

After the MAS incident, Sabah kidnapping case and reports on terrorism attacks, our tourism industry is facing a great challenge. Some tourism industry players forecasted the Chinese New Year season would be the peak season but it turned out to be a cold season with business dropping by 50%.

One of the factors was due to slowing down of economy and another factor was due to the government. The flip-flop policy on free visa for Chinese tourists happened many times. As a result there was a loss of opportunities during the China golden weekend and the Spring Festival tourism drive.

Last September till January this year, the government has delayed the implementation of the free visa policy for Chinese tourists. Among the reasons given were the immigration department ignored the Cabinet’s decision, the department also worried free visa would cause an influx of illegal immigrants and the China government did not respond to the free visa policy yet. Finally the Malaysian government made the decision of issuing free visa with attached conditions.

However the application for the free visa must incur a processing fee. This angered the Chinese tourists who showed their displeasure on the social media. They questioned why the one minute procedure had to be charged at an exorbitant fee? When the Chinese tourists were at the one stop visa centre in China to process their applications, they only had to pay 120 to 220 yuan. However using online application (ENTRI), they had to pay USD20.

Of course the tourist agency would try to pacify or solve the problems for the tourists. Out of expectations after two weeks the visa centre increased the processing fees from 400 to 500 yuan which was an increase of 233%. The increase was more expensive than applying for the normal visa. The tourism industry players were very angry at the new rate. Some of them delayed or cancelled their visit to Malaysia.

It cannot be denied that the Chinese have a fantastic spending power. If our country wants to attract the Chinese tourists, we should not have such flip-flop policy which can be implemented in the morning and changed in the evening on the same day. We must be sincere and trustworthy in implementing online visa application.

Tourism industry stresses on service and quality. At this moment the government should ask the opinions of the industry players and not to let the bad image and publicity to drag on indefinitely.