MOTAC and Visa form strategic alliance to promote travel to Malaysia

06/25/2014

Visa named the Official Card for Visit Malaysia Year 2014 and Malaysia Year of Festivals 2015

The Ministry of Tourism and Culture (MOTAC) and global payments technology company Visa today entered into a strategic alliance to promote the Visit Malaysia Year 2014 and Malaysia Year of Festivals 2015 campaigns.

The alliance was today formalized with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between MOTAC, represented by Secretary General, Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Datuk Dr. Ong Hong Peng, and Visa, represented by its Vice President, Consumer Products, Ruben Salazar Genovez.

Under the agreement, Visa is named the Official Card for Visit Malaysia Year 2014 and Malaysia Year of Festivals 2015. Visa’s global presence will help to encourage more people to visit Malaysia and support MOTAC to achieve its 2014 targets of reaching 28 million tourist arrivals and RM76 billion in tourism receipts.

Ng Kong Boon, Country Manager, Malaysia, Visa said: "Visa is very proud and excited to be named the Official Card for Visit Malaysia Year 2014 and Malaysia Year of Festivals 2015. Through this strategic alliance with MOTAC we are looking forward to using our global reach to promote Malaysia as a world leading tourist destination to Visa cardholders around the world.”

Secretary General Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Datuk Dr. Ong Hong Peng, said: “We are very excited to have Visa as our strategic alliance partner for the Visit Malaysia Year 2014 and the Malaysia Year of Festivals 2015. These two key events will not only benefit from the association with one of the world’s leading brands, but will provide us with endless opportunities to reach out to an unprecedented global audience through Visa’s global network.”

Visa will be working with MOTAC to promote Malaysian tourist destinations, attractions and events to visitors from key travel corridors such as Singapore, Thailand, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Japan, India, Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan.

Visa will also work with its banking partners in each of these countries to promote targeted destination offers and attractions to millions of Visa cardholders. These include key tourism packages and offers tied to events such as Fabulous Food 1Malaysia, Penang International Jazz Festival and many others.

During the event, Visa also unveiled an innovative travel app – the Visa Explore App, which will provide relevant information to travelers visiting Malaysia, such as tourist hotspots, transportation options, local etiquette, and promotional offers related to shopping and dining. The app aims to allow visitors to see the best that Malaysia has to offer and to enhance visitors’ overall cultural experience while in the country.

Visa and the MOTAC will use Visa’s strategic merchant partners to develop and promote key programs to Visa cardholders encouraging them to visit Malaysia. These include promotional offers in the travel, food, entertainment, and retail segments, as well as for prominent sports and cultural events in the country.

 

About Visa

Visa is a global payments technology company that connects consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and governments in more than 200 countries and territories to fast, secure and reliable electronic payments. We operate one of the world’s most advanced processing networks — VisaNet — that is capable of handling more than 47,000 transaction messages a second, with fraud protection for consumers and assured payment for merchants. Visa is not a bank and does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers. Visa’s innovations, however, enable its financial institution customers to offer consumers more choices: pay now with debit, ahead of time with prepaid or later with credit products.

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