KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 2): The Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents (MATTA) has announced that MATTA Fair — Malaysia’s largest consumers’ travel fair — is back on Nov 20 to 21, 2021 at the World Trade Centre (formerly known as PWTC) Kuala Lumpur.
According to MATTA chief executive officer Phua Tai Neng, the last MATTA Fair was held in September 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic hit in March 2020.
“After the 21 months of lockdown and 'no business' in the travel and tourism industry, our members and other tourism players are eager to get started again and are looking forward [to] this established event — the MATTA Fair.
“The MATTA Fair is a significant indicator to the people that the tourism industry is back and will gradually be revived for people to travel domestically and very soon internationally as borders will eventually be reopened, with set travel safe protocols,” he said in a statement on Tuesday (Nov 2).
Phua noted its members and other tourism stakeholders have suffered greatly during the pandemic in the past 21 months and as such, MATTA has decided to help the exhibitors by providing about 50% discount on booth rental costs.
He added this 49th edition of MATTA Fair will be different as it is a much smaller version occupying 7,550 square metres of floor space with two halls.
He said Hall 4 is known as Malaysia Hall where nearly all state tourism organizations and domestic travel and tourism products are, while most of the international tourism players are in Hall 3.
“This MATTA Fair has received strong support with participation from almost all state tourism organizations, namely Sabah, Terengganu, Sarawak, Pahang, Selangor, Johor, Kedah, Perak and Negeri Sembilan.
“Besides Tourism Malaysia, [which is] taking 30 booths, we also have international tourism organizations in this MATTA Fair, namely [South] Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Japan, Turkey and Uganda.
“These international tourism organizations want to continue to promote their markets with high anticipation of potential 'travel later' very soon,” said Phua.
Admission into the MATTA Fair is free, and it is open from 10am to 8pm for the two days.