KUALA LUMPUR, 8 June 2022: Malaysia’s travel companies are looking forward to participating in a major consumer travel event, Bazaar MATTA, organised by the country’s Malaysian Association of Tours and Travel Agents.
Designed to drive bookings to domestic destinations, the event scheduled for 18 to 19 June in Kuala Lumpur will be packed to the rafters with travel deals for land and air transport as well as accommodation. Bazaar MATTA flies the flag for domestic travel, which is right now helping to keep thousands of resorts, hotels and homestays open and counting an improvement in cash income. The show will be hosted at the Sunway Velocity Mall in Kuala Lumpur from 1000 to 2200 on 18 and 19 June. Bazaar MATTA’s lead sponsors are Sabah, Tourism Malaysia and Malaysia Airlines.
MATTA is promoting the event to revive domestic travel but has an eye on international travel markets such as Singapore, Australia and Europe in the long run. But the priority since international borders reopened on 1 April is to boost domestic travel to put cash in the pockets of small to medium-sized travel operators.
MATTA president Datuk Tan Kok Liang told the New Straits Times earlier this week he expects travel arrivals to Malaysia to hit 5 million this year. Source markets such as India and Singapore will play a big part in boosting arrivals during the second half of 2022. According to Tourism Malaysia, the first four months of 2022 delivered 1 million visitors, with around 600,000 travelling from Singapore.
Key source markets looking forward to Q4 are India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia and Europe. Indonesia and Thailand will emerge too as strong supply markets by the fourth quarter.
