Malaysia has won the gold award for best overall performance in the China Outbound Travel & Tourism Market fair in Beijing, for its efforts in promoting tourism products to the Chinese international outbound market.

British Museum (UK) and United Airlines (USA) were the first and second runners-up respectively. 

The award, which recognizes Malaysia’s overall tourism promotion efforts in China in terms of public relations activities, maintaining close media and travel industry relations, as well as advertising and marketing initiatives, was presented by the Vice CEO of the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), Mr. John Koldowski, to the Director of Tourism Malaysia office in Beijing , Mr. Zulkafli Yahya on the 14th of April 2011 at the COTTM 2011 Theatre.

This is the eighth “CTW Chinese Tourists Welcoming Award” that was organised by the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute (COTRI) with the support of Tarsus Co. and ChinaTravelTrends.com.

Sixteen countries from four continents won in other categories which include marketing, product innovation, internet/media, service quality, and two new categories that were introduced this year, social media marketing and retail.

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang George Arlt, Director of COTRI, says the objective of the institute and the awards is to showcase the best practices within the industry for other industry players to exemplify. Based in Heide (Germany) and Beijing (China), COTRI is the world’s leading independent research institute for analysis, consulting and quality assessment relating to the Chinese outbound tourism market, and is an important quality sign for the tourism industry.

Malaysia received more than 1.1 million Chinese tourists in 2010, a 10% increase from 2009, with tourist receipts amounting to more than RM 3.1 billion.