LETTER | Matta done nothing to help tourism industry except appear in the media

LETTER | The Covid-19 pandemic has been on-going at least for the last 12 months, and everyone in the travel industry globally has been badly affected. With the recent announcement of 5,000-plus daily cases in Malaysia, one wonders when will the end be in sight.

The Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents (Matta) and its president, Tan Kok Liang, however, has done almost nothing to address the issues currently facing its members or the travel industry, except to appear in the media criticising the efforts of others, including the government, to keep things afloat.

I am no fan of some of the recent measures taken by the government to battle Covid-19, but I also recognise it is not helpful to criticise unconstructively and not provide workable solutions, as Matta and Tan have done.

Tan's latest outburst is that the government's 10-year tourism blueprint did not take into consideration industry inputs. As a supposed key player in Malaysia's travel industry, shouldn't Tan have actively engaged the government and forced his way into the conversation when the blueprint was being developed?

Or was he waiting for someone to invite and roll out the red carpet for him to lay out his pieces of wisdom? If Tan was not aware of the blueprint being developed, then Tan evidently has not been engaging with the government constantly or sufficiently enough for someone who fills the seat of the Matta presidency.

Matta's and Tan's previous suggestions to assist the travel industry, in a nutshell, is - wait for it - for the government to spend more money or for another party to take a hit on their income to lessen expenditures for tourism players.

Is that the limit of the Matta leadership's thinking? Any specific ideas for example on intra-state activities, controls surrounding inter-state travel, domestic travel marketing, reselling of travel employees, alternative income streams for travel agents, digitisation? What ideas can be implemented during a movement control order (MCO), conditional MCO, and recovery MCO?

At the very least, Matta should already have published a public paper that outlines their proposals for the 10-year tourism blueprint and how the tourism industry and travel agents can make do during this difficult period.

I suggest Tan and Matta man up like many of us are trying to do, and cease making unhelpful, embarrassing comments which do not progress any industry agenda whatsoever.

Travel and tourism agents deserve a far better organisation that the current Matta leadership has provided. They have been barely helpful and as far as I'm concerned to have been a failure in the last 12 months.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.