Fan Bingbing tasked by Malaysia’s Melaka to lure in 1 million Chinese tourists
- Melaka is banking on Fan’s star power, local durian and visa-free policy to convince Chinese holidaymakers to head to the southwestern state
Fan, who mysteriously disappeared for four months as allegations of tax evasion swirled around her in 2018, spent last weekend in Melaka hosted by the government to sample the spiky fruit and local desserts as it seeks to persuade a large slice of the five million Chinese visitors for the whole of Malaysia to travel to the southwestern coast.
Tourism is the third-largest contributor to Malaysia’s economy behind the manufacturing and commodities sectors and the Southeast Asian has frantically been working to raise visitor numbers back to pre-pandemic levels when the industry constituted as much as 16 per cent of the gross domestic product.
“After the Covid-19 pandemic, my mind was very unsettled, and I had not travelled abroad,” Fan, dressed in a traditional pink Nyonya kebaya dress, told reporters.
“However, post-pandemic tourism has become lively again, and people will surely choose places they have never visited before.”
With a mix of local, Portuguese, and Dutch influences, the modern day city of Melaka does well with tourists, with over 116,000 Chinese people visiting between January to April, according to authorities.
Melaka has been closely tied to the Ming dynasty in China since the 15th century, who offered the Malay sultanate of Melaka protection from other regional powers, particularly the Siamese.
This long historical tie continues to be cited today as proof of good relations between Malaysia and China.
Fan’s appointment echoes previous attempts by Melaka to use celebrities from Jackie Chan to Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan in the hope of promoting Malaysia to their large fan base.
With over 1.47 million Chinese nationals visiting the country in 2023, Malaysia now hopes to entice many times that number this year, as both countries ease visa requirements between each other in commemorating the diplomatic relations milestone.
“We are positive about reaching over five million tourists from China because the current flight frequency is more than 247 flights weekly, and in terms of seat capacity, there are almost 4.9 million seats available from China to Kuala Lumpur,” Tourism Malaysia director general P. Manoharan said in April.
While lower than the Malaysian target, Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) President Yang Wanming is confident that the number of Chinese tourists travelling to Malaysia by the end of 2024 will surpass the pre-pandemic figures recorded in 2019.
“It is expected that the number of Chinese tourists visiting Malaysia this year will reach 3.36 million by the end of this year compared to 3.1 million in 2019,” Malaysian national news agency Bernama quoted Yang as saying in April.
Signs of a Chinese tourism rebound were seen as early as February with the arrival of sightseers for the long Lunar New Year holiday this year surpassing that of last year by over tenfold, and twice as many as there were in 2019.
This is according to Chinese payment gateway Alipay, which reported that Malaysia is the fifth most popular destination globally for Chinese tourists, based on the number of transactions from Chinese nationals recorded in the country.
The Ant Group-operated Alipay is an affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post.
These holidaymakers also injected almost 1.5 billion ringgit (US$320 million) in spending into the Malaysian economy, according to The Malaysian Chinese Tourism Association.
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Nigel Wong, the president of the Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents (Matta), said the group has been seeing a rise in tourist arrivals from China, but is still waiting for the exact number from the government.
“There has been an increase ever since the relaxation of visa requirements although a substantial amount of in-kind tourists are also made up of independent travellers,” Wong told This Week in Asia.
According to him, this uptick in solo travellers is a sign that the trend in tourism from China is shifting from the usual Chinese tour group holidaymakers from previous years.
Malaysian island resorts as well as the Borneo territory of Sabah are some of the popular spots for Chinese tourists, alongside the national capital of Kuala Lumpur and the food haven destination of Penang.
Across the narrow Johor Strait dividing Malaysia and Singapore, the fledgling Chinese-funded property development project of Forest City is being given a potential second lease of life after being made a Special Financial Zone (SFZ) last August.
MM2H participants choosing to set up base in Forest City – alongside other special economic zones – will now enjoy a much more relaxed list of requirements which include a revised minimum age of as young as 21 years old “to spur foreign investments”.
