Shreya Nair
Image credit: Calvin Teo
The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in green lanes and travel bubbles shaping the future of travel. Amidst the efforts to boost travel, Tourism Malaysia’s director-general, Musa Yusof, addresses the possibility of potential travel bubbles and leisure travel in Malaysia. Their immediate neighbouring countries would be the main target to establish these travel bubbles.
In an interview with Malay Mail, Musa discussed his hopes to see some movement through green travel bubbles from 2021. These travel bubbles would mainly target neighbouring ASEAN countries rather than tourists all around the world.
The two schemes- Periodic Commuting Arrangement (PCA) and Reciprocal Green Lane (RGL) were announced earlier this year to enable essential travel between Singapore and Malaysia.
Musa pointed out that Singapore alone constitutes around 65% of Malaysia’s incoming tourists.
He suggested in expanding the already-in-place cross-border travel for essential services. This would allow for leisure travel between Singapore and Malaysia only if the situation doesn’t worsen.
Also read: Singapore, Thailand to Speed Up Green Lane Talks
Apart from Singapore, Musa also mentioned Thailand, Brunei and Indonesia as other prospective cross-border leisure travel partners.
Musa further mentioned that his focus is not on increasing air travel but to boost tourism from the neighbouring ASEAN countries. These countries, with a combined population of over 600 million contribute to a major part of their yearly tourists.
With the hopes of increasing leisure travel by early 2021, the tourism industry in Malaysia hopes to recover from the exceedingly low tourism numbers as a result of the global pandemic.
