MELAKA: About 50 luxury cruise ships with an estimated 25,000 foreign tourists are expected to make a stopover in Melaka during the Visit Melaka Year 2024 (TMM 2024).
State Tourism, Heritage, Art and Culture Committee chairman, Datuk Abdul Razak Abdul Rahman, said the state government, through the Tourism Promotion Division (BPP), will work with tour agencies and luxury cruise companies to offer various attractive travel packages to tourists.
"We also want to ensure that tourists who board luxury cruise ships can stay overnight in Melaka, whereas now they just stop over for a few hours to visit the state's tourism destinations and attractions.
"Many programmes have been lined up, and special and attractive packages will also be offered to tourists visiting Melaka," he told reporters at the Customs, Immigration and Quarantine (CIQ) Complex at the Melaka-Dumai International Ferry Terminal at Bandar Hilir here.
He said this after welcoming the MS Amadea cruise ship with 390 tourists, mostly from Germany, which made a stopover at the ICQS from Singapore at 8.45am this morning.
During the stopover, the tourists will be visiting some famous spots in Melaka, especially in the Banda Hilir area, before the cruise ship from the Bahamas continued its journey to Port Klang.
Abdul Razak added that this year, about 30 to 40 luxury cruise ships have responded positively to anchor in Melaka waters and bring their tourists to the state.
Meanwhile, he said even though Melaka did not have a dedicated berth for luxury cruise ships, this was not a main issue for the state to lure tourists from such ships to stop by the state.
He said this is because tourists from luxury cruise ships would be taken by boat from the ship to the ICQS pier and that the facilities at the complex were complete and capable of handling the entry of large groups of tourists. – Bernama