SHAH ALAM, April 15 ― The Selangor government is set to meet the Tourism Ministry this month to mitigate the drop in Chinese tourists following the Flight MH370 crisis, state exco member Elizabeth Wong said today.

Acknowledging that the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 tragedy had affected the tourism industry throughout the whole country, Wong said Selangor would work together with the ministry to find “alternative strategies”.

“We will also have a big meeting with all the state exco together with the Ministry of Tourism and Culture end of this month, among others specifically to deal with the problem of Chinese tourists,” the Selangor exco for tourism, consumer affairs and environment told the state assembly here.

Wong said the Selangor government had already held a meeting early this month to list down the problems faced by the tourism industry, as well as brainstorm on strategies to draw more tourists to the state.

“Because we see there is a pattern of tours being cancelled but we also received information that this is not for the long term,” the Bukit Lanjan assemblyman said.

Last Thursday, Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz said as many as 30,000 Chinese tourists cancelled trips they planned here up till 2015 after Malaysian receive fairly bad press over the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

To mark its respect for the aviation disaster, the Tourism Ministry decided to postpone all promotions for its Visit Malaysia Year 2014 tourism campaign.

Last year, 1.6 million tourists from China visited Malaysia and was the third largest group after Singapore and Indonesia.

Today marks the 41st day since the Boeing 777 aircraft disappeared from radar screens.

The Beijing-bound flight left the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) on March 8 and went missing the same day. Of the 229 people on board, 153 were Chinese nationals.

On March 24, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced that the flight path of the Boeing 777-200ER aircraft “ended in the southern Indian Ocean”. The search for MH370 continues today.