Tourism Malaysia plans to ramp up promotion and development of Malaysian homestay packages for Australians.
The packages have already proven popular amongst travellers from Japan, Korea and Singapore, with over 68,000 tourists sampling a homestay in Malaysia last year.
Malaysia homestay packages offer tourists the chance to live with a local family for as little as A$27 a day.
Staying in a kampung (village), house visitors will discover the simple lifestyle in the country, learn about close-knit family relationships and enjoy home-cooked food.
Shahrin Mokhtar director of Tourism Malaysia in Sydney, says that the programme aims to appeal to Australians desire for authentic cultural experiences, while also helping to spread the benefits of tourism more evenly throughout the country, and to rural communities.
Since launching in 1995, the homestay programme now offers over 3,998 rooms in 142 villages where operators have all been officially trained and licensed by the Ministry of Tourism.
Accommodation is usually in traditional wooden houses on stilts.
The Ministry of Tourism recently launched Malaysia Rail Tourism packages, which allow visitors to travel by train from Singapore and explore east coast of Peninsular Malaysia while staying at the ‘kampung’ houses dotted along the countryside.
For more details visit www.go2homestay.com
