UNCTAD Praises Malaysia's Tourism Website. But Will They Praise The Tourism Minister?
The Malaysian government’s tourism website was described as a model of e-tourism by UNCTAD.“One only needs to look at the Government of Malaysia's tourist website to appreciate the value and relevance of e-tourism for a modern economy,” United Nations Conference Trade and Development secretary general Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi said on Wednesday.
He said in many ways the website was a model with superb display of marketing information, graphics and designs directing visitors immediately to separate portals for consumers and business travels.
“Relevant information is available at one’s fingertips. This is the marvel of e-tourism, a dramatic demonstration of burgeoning partnership between technology and the travel industry,” he said when opening UNCTAD Conference on “Asia-Pacific; E-tourism for Growth.”
He said there were still challenges to meet in building e-tourism capacity at regional and local levels, for local communities and SME’s to be competitive in a globalised economy. He said E-tourism was largely responsible for the Asia-Pacific Region to have become one of the fastest growing areas for international tourist arrivals.
Tourism is expected to continue to grow in the future and China is set to become the number one destination by 2020, he said. “E-tourism accounts for a good part of its (China's) success,” he said.
He added that initiatives to promote and develop e-tourism among the various countries saw countries like Thailand reporting 150,000 hits on its booking websites with over 1,000 confirmed bookings monthly when they started in 2004.
Similarly Cambodia’s website saw 230,000 visits and one of its hotels reported that 70% of its revenue came from online bookings since they begun online bookings about three years ago, he said.
Vietnam’s website attracted 7.5mil users. (TheStar)
***** Good news indeed. Unfortunately while our e-tourism efforts must be lauded, the same cannot be said about the Minister-in-charge, the now notorious Tengku Adnan. By opening his mouth and spewing out ridiculous statements he has demeaned himself and by extension the government. He probably got several hundred thousand 'hits' of a different kind by bloggers and other Internet users over the past few days.
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posted by The Malaysian. at 3/14/2007 08:12:00 PM
4 Comments:
v believe he will be equally at home slump in the jungles of Borneo with the orang utans ( and v r being kind...)
A lot of Western tourists, especially, now do their own window shopping on the Internet. Many still go through travel agents for booking a tour, but no longer depend on travel agents as their main source of decision making information. So it is very important for the country to put a very good presentation for tourism on the internet.
I agree the Tourism Malaysia website is pretty good, even less well known attractions have an entry there. Obviously a lot of effort went into it, and its one of the few government websites which is actively kept up-to-date.
The less said about the Tourism Minister the better. He's appears to be highly suspicous of the impact of internet technology such as blogs, and has a heavy case of "foot-in-mouth" disease.
haha, the would-be computer-savvy tourists to Malaysia would not only find out about the M'sia Tourism site but also sites discussing the good effort of Tengku Adnan who has shot himself in the foot more than once in the past few months.
don't blame anyone, go travel and help malaysia tourism to grow: http://www.cuti.com.my
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