Tourism M'sia reaches out to schools, varsities

FRANFURT: Tourism Malaysia Frankfurt in efforts to promote Malaysia here, is reaching out to schools, universities and other institutions of learning.

Its director Syed Yahya Syed Othman said besides concentrating on the usual audience of travel agents, tour operators and the like, it is also reaching out to school-going children, who also exercised influence over their parents in the choice of tourist destinations.
"We are reaching out to school-children because these are young and enquiring minds. They will remember their school visit to Tourism Malaysia's Frankfurt office and also want to know more about Malaysia as they grow up. In effect, we are creating a new constituency of potential visitors to Malaysia for the future," he told Bernama here Tuesday.
Earlier, he received an unusual visit of a group of 21 students from the Frankfurt International School, aged between eight and 10, accompanied by four teachers, to find out more about Malaysia and its various tourist attractions.
"Many of them wanted to know if Malaysia had dolphins. They were apparently interested in Malaysia's wild life and nature. Orang utans seemed to be quite popular with them.

"One little girl wanted to know if we had elephants, tigers, etc. Another boy was, surprisingly, well aware of the Petronas twin towers and wanted to know more about Kuala Lumpur," he added.
Syed Yahya said the Tourism Malaysia Frankfurt office would also be organising a visit by a group of tourism students from the Cologne Business School to Malaysia in January, next year.
They will be visiting Malaysia for 10 to 12 days and while in Malaysia will be visiting the Universiti Teknologi Mara, Universiti Sains Malaysia and the Taylor College University in Kuala Lumpur, and will be visiting Langkawi and staying at a home-stay programme to get a feel of Malaysian life, he said.
He said that tourism traffic from Germany to Malaysia had posted a 7.2 percent growth in the first six months of 2012 compared with the same period last year.
Some 64,705 Germans visited Malaysia in the January-June period this year. -- BERNAMA


----------------------------

Pada saya program begini memang jadi tarikan pelancong terutamanya pelajar sekolah. Memang sekolah-sekolah di Europe selalu buat lawatan belajar ke negara orang tetapi biasanya diantara negara Europe jugalah. Contohnya kelab Bahasa Spanish akan buat lawatan ke Spain, Kelab bahasa French tentulah menjadikan Perancis destinasi mereka.

Dulu saya kerja sambilan di sekolah ini dan itulah 'typical' aktiviti. Antara sebab lainnya ialah penerbangan tambang murah yang banyak ditawarkan oleh Syarikat penerbangan Easyjet, Ryanair dan lain-lain.

Jadi, kalau lawatan ke Malaysia itu tentulah susah sikit nak dirancang kerana jarah perjalanan yang lama dan kos yang mahal. Tapi kalau bayar ikut Euro / Pounds rasanya tiada masalah..