KUALA LUMPUR, June 21 — The government aims to generate an income of RM11.1 billion for the tourism industry with a total of 4.5 million tourist arrivals this year through the implementation of the Tourism Recovery Framework (TRF) 2.0.

Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture Datuk Seri Nancy Shukri said the revised target was based on positive indications involving the arrival of 2.3 million tourists in the country within the last three months.

"This is beyond our target, initially we targeted two million until the end of the year but now it is not even the end of the year, yet we have already achieved that.

"Maybe by September we could see more, we will continue to review this from time to time,” she told a press conference after Motac’s tourism dialogue session and the TRF 2.0 Launch Ceremony here today.

She was previously reported to have said that her ministry was targeting two million tourist arrivals to Malaysia this year with more than RM6.8 billion in tourism receipts.

Nancy said to achieve the optimistic target, TRF 2.0 would focus on smart international and national collaborations as well as the local community empowerment agenda in facing the uncertainties of the tourism industry in the future.

She said the plan, which had been improved together with industry players through the Tourism Productivity Nexus (TPN), would also pay attention to efforts to increase the country’s income through the tourism sector.

"This strategic framework outlines five pillars of the tourism strategy, namely, supporting the restoration of tourism and culture businesses; restoring tourist confidence and having smooth international and intra-regional travel.

"Reinventing tourism and cultural products or services to drive competitiveness; aligning tourism with sustainability and inclusiveness; and strengthening recovery with long-term resilience and crisis preparedness,” she said.

As of last month, Nancy said the ministry had channelled RM23.8 million in financial assistance to 15,000 tour operators, while RM4.73 million worth of vouchers had been redeemed for the purchase of craft products, visual arts and books and another RM2.35 million worth of vouchers offered for travel packages and land transport.

As for matching grants for home stays and budget hotels, she said a total of 342 applications worth RM1.64 million had been approved for homestays and 43 applications worth RM886,000 were approved for budget hotels as of June 15. — Bernama