S. Americans are potential tourists too

As it stands, the only South American city that Malaysia Airlines flies to is Buenos Aires in Argentina, while AirAsia does not fly to that side of the world.

I WAS pleasantly surprised, on a recent trip to Chile, at how random people on the street seemed to have rather decent knowledge about Malaysia despite us doing so little to promote ourselves as a tourism destination in the South American continent.

A lady at the supermarket checkout counter, for example, was able to tell me, upon finding out I was Malaysian: "Ah, Singapore (pointing downwards), Malaysia (pointing upwards)" - indicating she knew exactly where we are on the world map. No, she went on to say in a delightfully mangled combination of Spanish, English and sign language, she has never been to our part of the world, but would really like to visit Singapore one day. Hmmm.

Chats with our ambassador to Chile and a few Chilean tourism officials revealed that South Americans, particularly the younger set, are increasingly showing interest in Southeast Asia as a holiday destination, helped by rising affluence. They come for the warm climate, the food and the beaches. However, many see Malaysia only as a transit point to go to either Singapore or Thailand.

Malaysia would do well to act quickly to correct this, not just because we have so much to offer, but also because we have identified tourism as one of the key ways to boost the economy by 2020.

We need to move faster to shine the spotlight on ourselves in South America. For a start, it would make sense for Tourism Malaysia to open up one or more offices to help create awareness on what the country can offer.

It is mind-blowing that there isn't a single Tourism Malaysia office in the entire South American continent - that's 12 countries and some 485.7 million people we're talking about. The few promotion efforts are currently based out of the New York office.

For people to come to Malaysia, there also needs to be better flight connectivity and it would help if the local airlines plied more routes to that region or worked out code-sharing agreements.

As it stands, the only South American city that Malaysia Airlines flies to is Buenos Aires in Argentina, while AirAsia does not fly to that side of the world.

Tourism Malaysia can also work closely with the airlines to come up with interesting packages.

Tourism, the fifth largest sector in Malaysia in 2009 with tourist receipts of RM53 billion, represents big bucks to the country, and it needs to start looking beyond its traditional markets if it wants to achieve its ambitions of increasing tourist arrivals by 1.5 times to 36 million by 2020 from 24 million in 2009 and growing the sector by three times.

While it has so far chosen to do this by focusing on medium-haul markets like China and India, it can't afford to ignore South America for too long as it would only mean missed opportunities that would serve to benefit Singapore and Thailand further.