MELAKA: The Melaka State Government will be holding a three-day tourism promotion in Medan, Indonesia from this Friday to attract more visitors especially health tourists to the historical state.
Chief Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Ali Rustam said the promotion, themed ‘Jom ke Melaka’ held in conjunction with ‘Melaka 750 Years’, would be launched at Hotel Aryaduta in the largest city in Sumatra with a population of two million. “More than 300 participants including exhibitors from various government agencies and the private sector will be joining the maiden tourism mission to northern Sumatra,” he told reporters here yesterday.
He said the state government held a similar promotion in Pekan Baru in 2000 and through its success, more visitors came from Riau province to Melaka especially health tourists.
“We hope the Medan promotion achieves the same results as the one in Pekan Baru,” he said adding that last year, there were more than 80,000 health visitors from Sumatra who came to seek the service of specialist hospitals here.
According to statistics, more than 200,000 tourists from Sumatra visited Melaka making them, the third largest foreign tourist group after Singapore and China to visit the state.— Bernama
He said efforts would be stepped up to increase tourist arrivals from Sumatra as they had the potential to become the largest foreign tourist group to Melaka.
“Based on feedback, not many in Medan know about the tourist attractions in Melaka as they only know about A Famosa when we have already achieved the World Heritage City status by Unesco,” he said.
He said Yayasan Melaka through its subsidiary, Melaka Holiday would be offering tourist packages to attract Medan tourists to visit Melaka and vice versa.
During the visit, Mohd Ali had also been scheduled to launch the Melaka Air flight from Medan to Melaka by Syarikat Penerbangan Firefly Sdn Bhd using ATR 72-500 aircraft for its twice weekly flights on Monday and Friday which began operations on Nov 11. — Bernama