From 19-21 November, the Selangor Smart City & Digital Economy Convention (SDEC) took place in the form of a hybrid event, hosted by the Selangor Information Technology & Digital Economy Corporation (SIDEC). In August 2021, Tourplus secured the partnership with Tourism Selangor to build a mobile app for the state agency. From there on, our Eco member, Rickson Goh, founder and CEO of Tourplus was once again invited by the government institution to speak about travel and tourism during the Day-1 panel with Roslan Sulaiman, Senior Deputy Director of IT at Tourism Malaysia.
Below is the excerpt of their discussion:
In summary, the global population is in the period of revenge spending. After being cooped up for so long, it’s no surprise that we’re willing to trade our hard-earned cash for experiences that matter to us.
But with international borders still not quite open, the focus is on domestic tourism. In fact, it could even be said that domestic tourism became the saviour of the industry, following an 83% drop in international visitors in 2020 compared to in 2019.
Agencies and companies like Malaysian Inbound Chinese Association (MICA) identified the unique selling propositions (USPs) of each Malaysian state, and proceeded to market them online.
An example would be Selangor’s Sky Mirror, the backdrop of thousands of Insta-worthy shots. That was how the industry leveraged digitalisation to cope with the pandemic, but Azrul Shah Mohamad, CEO of Tourism Selangor, also acknowledged that government agencies still had a lot to learn in this space.
As they’re not necessarily the most well-versed in digitalising the travel and tourism industry, it’s important that they engage and leverage the strength of players from the private sector to accelerate the learning process.
(Source: Vulcan Post)
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