The tourism industry is expected to contribute significantly to the effort to increase the country's income per capita and provide higher employment opportunities by 2020, according to the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) report by Pemandu.
It said Malaysia's growth in the tourism industry relied predominantly on growth of arrivals rather than yield, and said that if the trend continued, the country would need mass tourism arrivals."Going forward, it is more sustainable for Malaysia to shift its focus on growing yield per tourist rather than to rely heavily on growth and tourist arrivals.
"To attract the higher yield segment, we will need to both improve and upgrade tourist offerings and services and also enhance connectivity to key priority market," it said.The Tourism National Key Result Area (NKEA) targets to raise the total gross national income (GNI) to RM103.6 billion by 2020 from RM36.9 billion in 2009.
Twelve entry point projects (EPP) have been identified across five themes to enhance tourism yields, apart from three business opportunities together with organic sector growth, to stimulate tourism growth.The five themes cater to different segments ranging from the avid shopper to the nature lover and the business traveller as well as families on vacation.
Three of the business opportunities that have been highlighted are food and beverage outlets, local transportations and tour operators.According to the report, in order to achieve the targeted GNI, the sector needed to nearly triple GNI contribution from last year and focus on three main areas namely tourist arrivals, yields and tourist receipts.
The sector will require cumulative funding of RM203.9 billion from 2011 to 2020, where approximately three per cent will be public-sector funded while the remaining 97 per cent will come from the private sector."This represents a significant shift in both the scale of funding going into the tourism sector and also in the public-private funding mix," the report said.For baseline growth, a total of RM63.6 billion in investments are expected to sustain current tourism facilities and ongoing projects.
The government has also identified four enablers to ensure successful implementation of the EPPs, business opportunities and baseline growth including focusing on marketing, rolling out visa facilitation services, ensuring an adequate supply of qualified human capital and improving the tourism environment.
A Delivery Task Force (DTF) will be established and headed by the Prime Minister to ensure that the EPPs are implemented according to their timelines.
No comments:
Post a Comment