By P Prem Kumar
KUALAR LUMPUR
Three air disasters in nine months involving Malaysian-linked airliners has left the country's tourism sector reeling as the numbers of visitors plummets.
Mirza Mohammad Taiyab, the director general of Tourism Malaysia, admits the country faces a “crisis” as air travelers avoid Malaysia and opt for neighboring Singapore or Thailand.
Taiyab told The Anadolu Agency that the country’s once buoyant tourism industry had lost visitors from China, Taiwan and Japan since Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished on March 8, presumed crashed into the Indian Ocean, but said “the gaps are nearing closure.”
Speaking Tuesday, he said: “The China market has not recovered yet but the gap is closing back when compared to the bigger drop we saw six months ago. We lost about 30 percent of Chinese tourists since April this year.
“To make it worse, the shooting down of MH17 also impacted our tourist arrival due to branding and confidence issues. But that is something much more related to Malaysia Airlines and external forces like Russia and Ukraine.”
The two Malaysia Airlines planes – one lost and the other shot down in July as it flew over Ukraine – saw the company’s credibility and share price fall drastically.
But the loss of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 over the Java Sea at the weekend has focused the flying public’s mind on the air industry in Malaysia as a whole.
Between them the three air disasters have resulted in the deaths of 699 passengers and crew.
AirAsia owns 49 percent of Indonesia AirAsia, the budget airline’s local subsidiary, but the parent firm and Malaysia have been trying to disassociate themselves from the latest catastrophe.
"We must focus on the fact that this aircraft is registered in Indonesia, the state of occurrence is in Indonesia, the state of registry is in Indonesia - it is an Indonesian aircraft," Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai told reporters on Monday.
But Taiyab recognized the potential threat of another disaster involving a Malaysian aircraft.
"Even though the flight was an Indonesian flight and was carrying majority Indonesians, the fact that it is an AirAsia flight is the issue,” he told AA.
"The AirAsia brand is a very prominent one in the whole of Asia and the whole region knows that the airline is based in Malaysia and its owner Tony Fernandes is a Malaysian."
Taiyab’s organization, Tourism Malaysia, operates to promote the country under the direct control of the government.
A year ago it declared 2014 as the Visit Malaysia Year. However, the plan was swiftly abandoned in the face of the first two disasters.
Tourists from Asia account for around a third of tourist arrivals in Malaysia, which stood at a total of 26 million visitors last year.
According to Taiyab, around 45 percent of flights to Malaysia from China, Japan and Taiwan were canceled at the height of the MH370 crisis due to the negative sentiment and an unofficial boycott.
Like many linked to the Malaysian tourism industry, Hamzah Rahmat, president of the Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents, is deeply concerned about the implications of the AirAsia on the sector.
"It is unfortunate that Malaysia is again implicated with an air crash,” he told AA. “Although the magnitude of the impact is not certain, we are pretty sure that the incidents will continue to slow down the tourism industry.
“The thought that another Malaysian product is involved in such incident could trigger fear among passengers, considering that there was never a banal period in Malaysia’s air tragedies throughout this entire year.”
The association will be analyzing the impact of the incidents on flight and hotel bookings in the coming weeks.
"We will release the report once every details are gathered,” he said. “The report is needed to give a proper understanding on the spin-off impact of the incidents."
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