KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 18 — Malaysia has to go beyond relying on its food to attract tourists, the new Tourism Malaysia chairman has said.

Businessman Datuk Siew Ka Wai, who was appointed as the tourism promotion board’s head almost half a year ago, said there is a need to “think outside the box” as tourists do not come just based on advertisements as in the past.

“We need to create and sell experiences. People will not remember going to buy a handbag. You create experiences for the tourists to come back. You must make it convenient for them. You must make it value for money, not necessarily cheap. Cheap is not the way to go. It must be value for money...is it worth spending that dollar? It is also about packaging Malaysia in a way that we end up on the bucket lists of world travellers.

“Food seems to be the main item to attract people to come here. But we must do more than that. Food is just incidental. Shopping is incidental. We have to create the experiences,” he was quoted saying by financial weekly The Edge.

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Siew said Tourism Malaysia will pour in more of its budget into building its presence online to reach a wider audience instead of less than 10 per cent previously, adding that it will be looking at new partnerships with companies like AliTrip, wechat and Tripadviser to tap into travellers that use the Internet to make decisions.

Siew said both the cuts to the Tourism and Culture Ministry’s advertising and promotion budget in the last four to five years and higher costs with the weaker ringgit has imposed greater demand on the ministry’s resources, adding that the government department has been in deficit for two years.

He said however that he believes the budget deficit will be “gone” in the next two years through a change in allocation of resources, noting that the recent announced closure of all Tourism Malaysia’s offices nationwide and five offices overseas alone would not be sufficient to resolve this issue.

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“Part of the recent cost-cutting is to reduce the strain on resources, but the RM8 million to RM10 million a year cost savings alone from the rationalisation of offices will not address the issue. We need to increase the allocation for tourism from the government directly or indirectly. We need to change the way we allocate resources.