Tourism set to stay a star performer

The star website

Malaysians beware. Tourism is here and its going to stay here forever. Despite our investments in other industries such as agriculture and heavy industries, tourism is slowly being recognised by the country to perform and out perform other industries.

Do we need more hotels? Do we need more airlines coming into Malaysia? Do we need more travel agents and tour guides? The answers are right at our faces and we have to deal with them directly and strategically. We just can't wait for another country to proceed with their events and we follow. We do have to be the leader in this.

Will we have to learn from Thai to create Visit Malaysia Year, retrospectively? Do we need to imitate the Thais for our Pesta Air. Do we need to the same with our Rainforest World Music Festival for Wombat in Singapore? Oh ... what about the Jazz Festival in Miri, which was initially done in Kuching just because of we have the Java Jazz? Mmmmm shall I try and think a bit harder just to show how we are plagiarising our industry?

I am afraid that Malaysians for now, has been learning from our friendly neighbours too much just in case ... if we were the followers, we do not have to dwell in the mistakes (if any) of our neighbours. I don't think that we like to take risks. And even if we do take risks, we employ our western counterparts for help and tell us what to do (this is after we have our 50 years of independence)... I am very sure that makes us at par with the westerners.

I remembered when KLIA was opened the very first time, a decade ago. We were supposedly have the best range of technical and computer assisted airports surpassing our neighbours such as Changi. I was one of the victims though. It took KLIA staff 45 minutes to get the bridge of the terminal in line with the mouth of the aircraft door. We can buy technology, we do buy our experts ... what about training our citizens on the technical part too. Well, KLIA has improved a lot but ... then comes Survanabumi .... bigger ...

Pura - I think i can be an elephant ... but people around me could only see the germs on the other side of the sea. DUH