Minister of Tourism and Culture, Dato’ Seri Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz, officiated the re-opening of Tourism Malaysia’s office in Istanbul today. He is on a nine-day working visit to Istanbul and Bucharest before attending the World Travel Market 2013 on 4 November in London.

Dato’ Seri Nazri officiated the re-opening of Tourism Malaysia’s Istanbul office at the Harmanci Giz Plaza, this morning, before attending the Visit Malaysia Year 2014 (VMY) Evening to promote the VMY 2014 campaign to Turkish tour operators and media.

“The Istanbul office, last operational in 2009, will oversee the Turkish, Armenian, Romanian, Azerbaijani, and Bulgarian tourist markets to Malaysia,” he said.

He said the move is expected to increase tourist arrivals from Turkey, by tapping into the growing outbound market, which showed a 3% growth last year, with a forecasted 40 million departures by 2017.

“This year, Tourism Malaysia estimates that a total of 10,300 Turkish tourists will be visiting Malaysia, an increase from last year’s figures of 9,909. The figure is expected to increase to 11,000 tourists next year, during the VMY 2014 campaign,” he added.

Currently, there are no visa requirements between Turkey and Malaysia, and air accessibility has improved with 7,238 weekly flights servicing the Istanbul – Kuala Lumpur route, through direct and indirect flights on Turkish Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, KLM, Air France and Qatar Airways.

Dato’ Seri Mohamed Nazri continues his working visit to Bucharest, Romania where he will meet with Embassy officials, tour operators, as well as pay a courtesy call on the Romanian Tourism Minister, Elena Udrea, before arriving in London on 2 November for the World Travel Market 2013.