So yours truly was in Langkawi recently with the Malaysian Inbound Tourism Association (MITA) team and other travel agents etc where MITA made the commitment to boost up Langkawi as the number one prime holiday destination…

With that in mind, MITA held the Langkawi Tourism Business Networking event at Ombak Villa Langkawi where more than 100 inbound tour operators, hoteliere and tourism product operators met up to network and complement each other…

The objective of the event were to unlock Langkawi’s new destinations and new tourism products which were quite a few….

…as well as to network among tourism players (B2B) to enable maximizing productivity for local tourism assets as well as to identify issues and problems hampering Langkawi’s potential productivity growth…

As it is there are already about 245 flights into Langkawi from all over the world on a weekly basis and with hotels about 75 -80 percent occupied..

The 2 day MITA Langkawi Business Networking which was supported by LADA, LADA Eco-Tourism Sdn Bhd and Langkawi Tourism Association also brought tour operators and some media (including yours truly) to interesting sights around Langkawi such as the Ayer Hangat Village where we had a simple lunch and soaked our feet at the natural salt water hotsprings,

…a super exciting mangrove tour at the magnificent Kilim Karst Geoforest Park, the Langkawi Wildlife Park as well as site inspections and visit to one of the latest hotels in Langkawi,

…Goldsands Hotel Langkawi and a dinner at the Gemalai Restaurant located at the beautiful Laman Padi on the first day itself…

When the B2B networking session was over, tour operators and media were also given a chance to choose their activity of the afternoon by Langkawi product owners -in which I grabbed the opportunity to go for Mega Watersports Jetski Tours, which was definitely is pretty challenging but I swear it is one of the best tours I have been on…

This ended with a visit to the new Paradise 101 island where fun continued and where we had a lovely dinner and a surprise fireworks show..

We left Langkawi on the 3rd day and headed to Yan, a district in Kedah where tourism players networked with the local product owners there as well and it was followed by a visit to the Ladang Nipah Ismail Che Kaq (Palm fruit farm) as well as the Batas Ubi Deer Farm where we got to feed and play with the deers there… I almost got my fingers chomped off by an over enthusiastic deer too while feeding it.. hahaha…

For more info on MITA and the next B2B or other MITA events, do check out  https://www.facebook.com/MITAMsia/