Tourism, one of the fastest growing sectors in Malaysia, was ranked number five after oil and gas, finance services, wholesale retail and palm oil as depicted by one of this exhibit boards displayed at the recent Economic Transformation Programme Open Day in Kuala Lumpur.
The exhibit also showed inbound tourism to be growing from RM29.7 billion in 2004 to RM53.3 billion in 2009 with the gross national income (GNI) per capita for the tourism sector at RM375 billion.
While our current GNI is RM37 billion, up from RM34 billion in 2009, the country’s aspiration is to enlarge this to RM97 billion in 2020.
Tremendous business opportunities abound for this sector. According to the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu), an estimated 45,000 additional taxis will be required by 2020, which also means we require more taxi drivers in terms of manpower.
Taxi drivers, who have daily interactions with tourists, would be one of the best brand ambassadors for the country if they are given proper training and incentives.
Pemandu also envisaged 830 new food and beverage outlets to be established and the demand for 7,500 more tour operators and guides in the country by 2020.
It is talking about enhancing the yield per visitor from RM1billion per week in 2009 based on the country’s tourism receipts of RM53 billion received last year and increasing it to RM3 billion per week in 2020 with the tourism receipts projected to reach RM168 billion by then.
Malaysia, which received 24 million tourist arrivals last year, is expected to increase it to 36 million by 2020.
Looking at the higher arrivals coming into Malaysia and the niche market segments like meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions that we hope to tap further into, we certainly need to look into the manpower needs for this sector, in particular training our front liners, including taxi drivers, to be more friendly and service oriented.
No comments:
Post a Comment