Malaysia do lose out to other Southeast Asian countries namely Indonesia and Thailand in attracting Chinese nationals tourists as the government not efficient in implementing the visa waiver programme for the Chinese tourists.
The new visa waiver programme was supposed to have been put into practice since 1st December last year, for those Chinese tourists who traveling in groups of tow or more people, but so far this programme has yet to be implemented officially.
What went wrong? Why can’t our authorities including Tourism Ministry and Immigration Department follow the cabinet decision and implement it?
I suspect over the government’s decision not to direct waive the visa requirement for Chinese tourists, whether the justification is to safeguard the interest of Ultra Kirana Sdn Bhd, a company appointed by the government to handle the one-stop-centre (OSC) visa application for Chinese tourists.
It is the global trend in exempting visa for Chinese tourists. It was reported that from January 2015, Indonesia has waived visa requirements for tourists entering into the country from this year onwards – including those from China – as part of the country’s “quick-win programmes” to boost arrivals to Indonesia and achieve 20 million arrivals by 2019”.
For Thailand, in 2013, they have leapfrogged Malaysia by increasing the number of tourists from 22.4 million to 26.5 million, a growth of 18.8% due to the visa waiver. Malaysia, on the other hand, registered a 2.7% increase, from 25 million to 25.7million.
The conditions we set for the visa exemption are very rigid. For instances, those Chinese tourists must travel in group of two or more, with engaging the traveling agency accredited by Malaysia government. It is against the favor of the travelers. More and more backpackers travel alone by self arrangement, not following any traveling agents. How can we tap in this market?
Meanwhile, I also express my concern over another newly introduced programme, the electronic visa (e-visa) which would come into effect since yesterday, January 2nd this year.
Even though the e-visa programme is poised to facilitate the application procedures for potential tourists, it has to be carried out efficiently by the authorities. Any drastic change or indecision will only create more confusion among the tourism operators.
The visa waiver and e-visa issues are important to Sabah, as tourism is our profit generating sector.