Telekom Malaysia and Tourism Malaysia launched the Unifi Travel Pass SIM, aimed at tourists who visit the country. Unifi Travel Pass offers mobile connection with an unlimited high speed data plan, access to unlimited Wi-Fi nationwide via wifi@unifi and unlimited entertainment via playtv@unifi app.
The offer is part of the Visit Truly Asia Malaysia 2020 campaign, whose aim is to achieve 30 million tourist arrivals and MYR 100 billion (US $24.6 billion) in tourist revenue in 2020.
The collaboration will focus on three main pillars—broadband connectivity for tourists, promotion of the campaign via Telekom Malaysia’s digital assets, and campaign promotion via global and domestic assets.
Unifi Travel Pass offers an unlimited high-speed-data SIM that enables tourists to stay connected during their visit to Malaysia. Tourists can choose either the 7 Days Pass for MYR 30.00 (US $7.38) or the 15 Days Pass for MYR 60.00 (US $14.76), both offering high speed 4G/LTE and 3G data. It also comes with preloaded airtime credit for them to make outgoing calls at MYR 0.20 (US $0.05) per minute and send SMS at MYR 0.10 (US $0.025) per SMS. In addition, tourists can reload credit anytime online or from over 15,000 Unifi Mobile reload vendors nationwide. As of the beginning of the year, Unifi Travel Pass is available for purchase via mobile.unifi.com.my/travelpass. Tourists can choose to collect the SIM card at Tourism Malaysia’s Tourist Information Centers at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
In this partnership between a mobile operator and a government tourist organization, it seems that the latter stands to benefit more.
The operator is offering non-Malaysian visitors mobile services, including unlimited high-speed data, at a relatively low flat rate, which may not be economical for the company. On the other hand, it is highly unlikely that such a generous offer will have longer-term financial benefit for the operator, since tourists are not potential subscribers beyond the time of their visit. So the Unifi Travel Pass SIM could end up costing the operator, or at least not making it much or any money, without making an impact on customer acquisition or retention.
Furthermore, it remains to be seen how persuasive the SIM will be to tourists, many of whom will have affordable roaming packages available from their operators back home. The fact that calls and texts are charged by the unit rather than unlimited could also make Unifi Travel Pass SIM less attractive than it could be. One might also question to what extent local entertainment content will be appealing to foreigners.
Nonetheless, the initiative will certainly benefit Tourism Malaysia, for which any uptake is upside. Those who purchase the Travel Pass will get not just mobile connectivity but a connection to specific tourist opportunities and attractions, and increased attendance at any of these of course benefits the country’s tourism sector.
We should note that the fact that Telekom Malaysia is a government-linked operator makes it more understandable that it would participate in this cooperative venture.
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