18 thoughts on “CAN WE HAVE MORE POSITIVE & TOURISM-FRIENDLY NEWS REPORTS, PLEASE?”

  1. Excellent point sir! News needs reflect reality and opportunity, not just sensationalism!

  3. WELL PUT, YB. IT HAS TO START WITH THE POLITICIANS… BE FIRM WITH THE CROOKS AND THE REST OF THE SNAKES WILL FOLLOW.

  5. Good piece of writing.

    First thing first.

    Now, the media did not create these events. Earthquake is a natural disaster. Stripping on a mountain which attracted attention worldwide is not our creation. Just in case we are unaware of the attention we created globally – the British Press put up a headline – “her tits caused the earthquake”.

    That’s how damaging the headline was to the country.

    Financial issues are not the rakyat’s creations and not created by the media as well.

    Who created it?

    The government, the leaders and the government agencies and their leaders.

    In short, if we want to keep our country’s good name and keep the tourists” perception of Malaysia good, keep our house clean and in order.

    Our leaders must be honest. At the moment they are not honest. The perception of the rakyat of this country is the leaders are corrupt.

    And the media too.

    So Sir,

    Please, despite you being given a job by the Government, its the duty of each one of the rakyat to start making our country clean – clean of corrupt leaders.

  6. You have to do something about all those nonsence “TAK PAYAH PAKAI VISA” entry into this country.. Most of the NON_VISA REQUIRED tourist is forever to stay and they are not bringing inflow money into this country.

  7. Can’t agree more YB. It seems that our enforcement agencies cannot wait to announce their so-called “achievements” of the arrest of IS sympathisers, new guidelines for the performing artists and promoters to be fulfilled otherwise no approval for their concerts, inadequate securities and the list is inexhaustive.

    The spending of million of our good RInggit to promote Malaysia will no doubt be negated by adverse publicity generated by our enforcement agencies with the help of our printed and electronic media.

  8. Its a good one for our authorities to ponder about. It is a waste of good money to promote and these useless heads of the authority are highlighting adverse news about our country. YB please stand up to these little napoleons before we lose more billion of tourist Dollars.

  9. Good points! Could you also enable or add a social media plug-in for your blog? So it’ll be much easier for us to share it on Facebook or Twitter.

    Cheers!

    • Yes. I am in the midst reconstructing the blog. Please bear with me. Thank you for your suggestions and patience. Regards

  11. Taylor Swift is holding 2 concerts in Singapore in November. Singapore and Shanghai are the only 2 Asian stops on her world tour schedule this year.

    How many Taylor Swift fans from Malaysia will hop over to Singapore to catch her concerts? The tickets for which, btw, have all been sold out. And not cheap either, with the most expensive tickets costing S$388! Now, what’s that in Ringgit?

    The point I am making is that Singapore has got it’s act together in promoting it’s tourism industry.

    Can we say the same about Malaysia?

    • We can’t say the same for Malaysia because our Jakim will try to impose conditions to make it almost impossible to have pop or rock concert. Mr Chairman thank you for speaking up for us. The truth hurts. We hope that the newspapers will be mindful of what they publish because anything adverse news will be picked up and blown out of proportion by our neighbours, who are our competitors. Please bear in mind this sad fact of life. I know newspapers have the tendency to sensationalise news but please take care of our national interests.

  12. YB, you may also want to re-look the media outreach strategy practiced by the PR people at Tourism Malaysia. There’s no point being a jaguh kampung by engaging the likes of The Star, NST etc, when your real audiences are overseas.

    Digital is the way to forward and its time for the dinosaurs at Tourism Malaysia to realize that.

    Just take a look at what Penang are doing to promote tourism in Singapore, Korea and Hong Kong. Instead of going on “lawatan sambil belabor” to London, Paris and Dubai, you should ask these officials to lawat and belajar from the Penang Tourism commission.

  13. Reblogged this on and commented:
    Sir, I enjoyed reading your article and appreciate your passion, frustration and patriotism. But I think in essence what you are suggesting is a suppression of the truth or as you call it the not so nice stories and a focus on a sort of ‘we’re the same as you so come here’ one size fits all approach to marketing Malaysia. Well, firstly in the social economy, you cannot suppress the truth but most important of all, communications do not build successful destinations. As someone who builds destination brands for a living, but who also visited Malaysia as a tourist in 1987 before moving to live here in 1994 Malaysia’s branding problems are structural and will not be solved with communications. The main problems with Malaysia’s tourism industry are 1) Not enough investment in tourism products, 2) Limited or misplaced invstment to get Malaysians on brand, 3) Ineffective marketing due to use of outdated tactics, 4) Misunderstanding of what is required to build a country brand, 5) Weak enforcement and 6) A focus on volume not value. When starting a journey, it is important to know where you are on the map otherwise you will keep going in the wrong direction. Please feel free to read http://brandconsultantasia.com/2013/09/05/back-to-the-drawing-board-for-brand-malaysia/ and
    http://brandconsultantasia.com/2010/02/09/case-study-use-research-to-form-the-foundations-of-a-tourism-brand-strategy/

  14. Well said coming from you, at least you’re a figure that people will notice or even take action.

    Unlike me, who is nobody, I have been actively promoting Malaysia’s positive side for the last 6 years on my social media and travel blog but does anyone care? I doubt it.

    People prefer to read juicy stuff, conspiracies, rubbish and things that don’t matter. For example, when I write a piece of ‘Caves to Visit in Malaysia’, only the orang putih will appreciate it. Asians on the other hand couldn’t care less about caves or the feedback I get is “Got Birdsnest arr??”

    Because of today’s social media society, the mainstream media (also being Asian) tends to focus and highlight on tragedies, misfortunes, who said what and so on. When they try to write something positive or touristic, readership drops and hence forced to jump on the bandwagon to deliver what the consumers want. Well that’s what I have seen and I could be wrong on this.

    Perhaps one solution is to constantly come up with new and interesting tactics in gaining the consumers (local and abroad) interest in tourism stories? Again, when I say ‘tactics’ it’s a tricky situation to get the mainstream players to follow suit.

    I hope that your voice will be heard and things will change, especially after what we have gone through over the last decade or tourism here in Malaysia. I have been doing my part (I hope) and I will continue to do so in promoting my country to the world.

    Oh by the way, a huge congratulations on your new posting and look forward to seeing changes being implemented in our beloved tourism. It’s high time we ditched that old style mentality and look towards new approaches, especially on the digital media side.

  15. Constant negative news will scare tourists away from our country.. Please look at Spore very little adverse news in their newspapers or electronic media. Please learn Malaysia.

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