Counting for Tourism Malaysia

Asia's Prime Holiday Destination, Malaysia, has crossed over 1400+ fans on the world's largest social networking platform "Facebook", and the numbers are still growing. Tourism Malaysia's official community page is constantly updated with the latest happenings, events, contests and promotions in Malaysia. Malaysia is the only country that has separate community pages specially customized and designed for other countries. Their community pages are present in New York, South Asia, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, India etc.

Mr. P. Manoharan, Director - Tourism Malaysia said, "In today's era where people spend most of their time in the virtual space, it's a medium you cannot afford to ignore. Social networking is a fantastic platform to reach out to today's youth and make Malaysia relevant to this audience. Keeping in touch with their friends, uploading photos, looking for jobs and seeking information, everything is now online. Our presence across these sites and our blog, have helped us interact with existing and potential visitors to Malaysia on a regular basis, and we have received tremendous support from them."

Social Media is a fast growing medium and dependency on internet based information is gaining popularity amongst discerning travelers. This interactive medium allows for direct interaction and exchange of information on favourite tourist places, newer destinations, sharing cultural values, designing customised travel packages and also inviting the target group for various events and celebrations that take place in Malaysia. It helps in understanding travelers' likes and dislikes, their travel patterns and studying emerging trends.

Tourism Malaysia is following a multi-channel approach, to cater to all sections of the audience, with its presence on sites like Twitter, YouTube, Orkut, LinkedIn, Qand portals, Blog - MalaysiaJao, WordPress and Flickr. Loyal fans enthusiastically participate in contests, contribute their experiences and leave feedback on a regular basis. Tourism Malaysia has managed to leverage its fan following with dedicated, round-the-clock customer support, as a result of which, its community presence is expanding at a rapid pace.

A presence across social media has helped Tourism Malaysia increase Indian footfalls to the country. It has managed to cover various unknown and fascinating facets of the country and increased interest in Malaysia as a holiday destination. Footfalls in Malaysia have also increased via interactions with prospective travelers and exciting ongoing promotions and contests like complimentary tickets to the Malaysian Grand Prix.

"Our intent is to offer holiday travelers a better travelling experience right from planning their journey to travel assistance in Malaysia via Facebook and Twitter. We would like to portray ourselves as a guide for travel to Malaysia with Live Assistance via Social Media," concludes Mr. P. Manoharan.

Source = afaqs