Prospect and Challenges of the Tourism Development Board of Malaysia Promotional Campaign “Cuti-Cuti Malaysia”

Domestic Tourism has been identified as a sector that will help to sustain local economic growth by acting as a safety belt for the local tourism industry. The number of domestic tourism increased by 30.1 percent from 12.3 million in 2000 to 16.0 million in 2005. Domestic tourism works best during school holidays and long weekends. Notably, it is during low seasons periods namely non-school holidays and weekends that most domestic products or services providers experience low quality destination rate. Over development of tourism products or services area further aggravates the situation. The challenges therefore are for all concerned to initiate efforts to educate the public to exercise planned vacation so as to minimize the impact of low season. As such, a promotional campaign developed by the Tourism Development Board of Malaysia called "Cuti-Cuti Malaysia" is organized yearly to promote its holiday destination within the country and also to position such an event with planned holiday culture among Malaysian. This paper attempts to explore the overall performance of the promotional event in terms of the demographic, psychological as well as the preferred destination among the customers that bought the holiday package. A total of 100 respondents were interviewed during the event. A personal interview was conducted using simple random technique. The findings shows that the event attracted local tourist because of the packages it offers and mostly were bought by the Malay race who are married with children. However, the finding also shows that there were lack of destination attraction and the advertisement and promotion campaign did not highlight the actual budget of the planned vacation. The paper concludes a discussion regarding actions that can be taken by the Malaysian Tourist Development Board of Malaysia and other parties in order to make sure that the domestic tourism industry be more successful in the future.