THIS year marks the 55th anniversary of the Malaysian-Hungary Diplomatic Relations, established in 1969. Leonard Alaza recently spoke with Ambassador of Malaysia to Hungary, Francisco Munis , about Malaysian-Hungarian ties with focus on the tourism industry. If we look at the Immigration Statistics, between 2017 and 2023, there were only 42,516 Hungarian entries into the country.
LA: It was reported that the Sabah Tourism Board has recently visited Budapest to undertake a Tourism Promotion Mission . Can you elaborate further on the STB’s TPM there?The STB’s TPM in Budapest was a right move. I was informed that the STB’s TPM in Budapest was the first to be held in the eastern European region. I must commend the STB for taking the effort to seriously look into this untapped region, as their potential market.
The Minister, Assistant Minister and Chairman of the STB, the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary and the CEO of the STB, were all actively involved in all engagement meetings. That shows how serious they are in looking into the potential of their new market. It was also discovered that many of the participating travel agencies have already created packages to our neighbouring countries Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines and hundreds of thousands of Hungarians flocking into those countries.
In my engagement with the Association of Hungarian Travel Agents, I was informed that as compared to other Asean countries such as Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam, Malaysia is not as active as their neighbouring countries in promoting tourism in the eastern European region. The 90 days visa free for Hungarian to stay in Malaysia for tourism purposes should be capitalised, too, in promotion strategy. Again, think about it, how many countries in our region offers a 90-day visa free to Hungarians for tourism purposes?
Complementing the efforts to tap potential market and promote Sabah, empowering the operators by incentivizing them to follow up would help accelerate and open up wider prospects. The STB engaged with the Budapest City Council to gauge and learn from the latter’s successful promotion of Budapest, as a city of tourism. The STB’s presentation on Sabah had impressed the BCC.
Sabah can through Hungary as the stage, advertise its successful rural tourism model to also promote Sabah’s visibility in the long term. Sabah should not just leave its successes in rural tourism remaining as it is, but should consider internationalising it to promote further visibility of Sabah’s tourism industry.