ACC Co-hosted the “China Millennial Travelers & Outbound Tourism Seminar” in Kuala Lumpur

On 9 December 2015, the ASEAN-China Centre (ACC) and the Ministry of Tourism and Culture and Malaysia Inbound Tourism Association co-hosted the “China Millennial Travelers & Outbound Tourism Seminar” in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The participants of the Seminar included members of the Malaysia tourism board, tourism enterprises and academics. ACC Secretary-General H.E. Mme. Yang Xiuping, Chairman of Tourism Malaysia Mr. Wee Choo Keong, Vice President of Malaysia Inbound Tourism Association Mr. Adam Kamal, Senior Director of International Cooperation Department of Tourism Malaysia as well as Director of Education, Culture and Tourism Division (ECTD) of ACC Mr. Tri Purnajaya participated in the Seminar.

Chairman Wee Choo Keong delivered remarks and extended his highest appreciation to ACC for co-hosting the Seminar in Malaysia. According to Malaysia tourism statistics, in 2014, there were a total of 1.6 million Chinese tourists visiting Malaysia, which ranked 3rd among the inbound tourism countries to Malaysia. As the largest outbound tourism market, there were over 100 million Mainland Chinese tourists traveling abroad in 2014, the travel mode of those was further subdivided. Besides a traditional sightseeing, leisure, shopping, health tourism had become a newly emerging tourism product and become increasingly popular among the Chinese market. ASEAN and China were geographically close and culturally bonded, and therefore the supply system of tourism product needed to be improved. Chairman Wee Choo Keong also mentioned the preferential policies such as visa free for Chinese tourist groups of more than 2 people, that could attract even more Chinese visitors. Malaysia Tourism Board would take this Seminar as an opportunity to continue conducting an in-depth discussion on the characteristics of Chinese tourism market and consuming habits of its travelers, to further promote its services and attract more Chinese tourists.

Secretary-General Yang expressed her appreciation for the support from the Malaysian side in co-hosting the Seminar and congratulated Malaysia for its successful convening of the 18th ASEAN-China Summit. She further added that ASEAN was one of the priorities of China's foreign diplomacy. Moreover, at the 18th ASEAN-China Summit, ASEAN and Chinese leaders expressed their willingness to work closely to further promote political trust and deepen pragmatic cooperation in all-round areas. All these had created a favorable condition for ASEAN and China to further strengthen their tourism cooperation.

Secretary-General Yang said the two-way visits between ASEAN and China were nearly 18 million in 2014, and that number was expected to be surpassing 20 million this year. Currently, there were over 1,000 weekly flights between ASEAN and China. She was confident that the Seminar would deepen Malaysia tourism industries’ understanding of the Chinese market, and provide better quality of services in the tourism industry.

Vice President of Malaysia Inbound Tourism Association Mr. Adam Kamal, Chairman of Malaysia-China Friendship Association and former Malaysian Ambassador to China H.E. Dato' Abdul Majid Khan also delivered remarks. They highly praised the positive effects for hosting this Seminar in promoting the level of services of the Malaysian tourism industry, and hoped this joint event with ACC could be continued.

At the Seminar, four experts from Guilin Tourism University delivered lectures, providing general information of the Chinese tourism development, the characteristics of its outbound travel market, e-commerce and tourism planning. The experts had an interactive discussion during the Q&A session with the participants, which was highly anticipated and well received by the local tourism industry.