Malaysian Inbound Tourism Association

Open borders to vaccinated tourists to revive tourism industry

KUALA LUMPUR, May 18 — Malaysia needs to start planning for the recovery of its tourism industry, such as implementing strategies to open up its international borders to tourists who have received the Covid-19 vaccine jabs, once the movement control order (MCO) 3.0 ends.

Uzaidi Udanis, president of the Malaysian Inbound Tourism Association (MITA), said that in order to resuscitate the country's ailing tourism sector, Malaysia should turn to and learn from other countries' best practices, such as Qatar, the Maldives, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

“We need to set up a sandbox (trial) where we can test certain destinations, like Qatar-Malaysia,” he says.

“At the same time, from October onwards, we should look at enabling vaccinated travelers to enter Malaysia without having to go through a quarantine period, with mandatory bookings through travel agents,” he told reporters in a Zoom press conference today.

He said that the association hoped that following the MCO, the National Security Council (MKN) will approve the domestic travel bubble, with only travel bookings made through travel agencies.

To support the tourist industry's survival, Uzaidi proposed an automatic zero-interest loan moratorium for all loans, beginning immediately and lasting through the end of the year, for all individual tourism players and tourist firms having loan facilities before March 2020.

“Since the MCO 3.0 was announced, the tourism sector has been almost completely paralyzed; there is no growth while interstate (travel) is prohibited and international borders stay closed; further, it has been claimed that a few popular locations, such as Langkawi, have become ghost islands with no tourists and have suffered significant losses,” he stated.

“We recognize that it will be difficult for the majority of us, but we are willing to make sacrifices for the benefit of the country and the people. Once we've achieved our goal, we'll be able to try a new way of travelling while adhering to the standard operating procedure (SOP),” he explained.