PUTRAJAYA: The Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry has formed a Tourism Recovery Committee following the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak.
Its minister Datuk Mohamaddin Ketapi said the committee would monitor the development of the issue at hand and tasked to provide advice and information to all tourists, which include stressing on the importance of personal hygiene as recommended by the Health Ministry.
The committee is also tasked to safeguard the tourists' safety and ensure all visitors are comfortable as the government initiated various preventive measures to address issues related to new coronavirus.
"This includes cooperating with the Health Ministry to conduct health screening on all tourists using the air, water and land entry points into this country.
"The committee will also come up with plans to find new markets to cushion the impact especially from China that is greatly affected by the coronovirus outbreak," he said in a statement.
Mohamaddin added that the ministry would work closely with industry players to ensure the tourism sector would not be affected and could operate as usual despite challenges faced, following the 2019-nCoV outbreak.
This would include allowing airlines to conduct inspection on all passengers who boarded their aircraft, he said.
Mohamaddin said the Malaysian government welcomed the lockdown measure taken by the Chinese government to those in the city of Wuhan and surrounding Hubei province.
He also expressed his support by Malaysia's move to suspend all visa facilities for Chinese tourists from Wuhan and Hubei as well as neighbouring provinces in China as part of its measure to combat the 2019-nCoV outbreak.
The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had said the suspension would include all Electronic Travel Registration and Information (eNTRI) facilities, visa-free entry, visa on arrival, e-visa as well as manual visa applications.
It said the decision to suspend all visas effectively immediately for tourists from China, especially those from Hubei province, was due to the development of the coronavirus outbreak.
Mohamaddin also said the ministry had no intention to review this year's tourist arrival target of 30 million despite the coronavirus outbreak that had in a way impacted the number of tourist arrivals.