Perak would be a new destination for tourists from India, said Tourism Malaysia director-general, Datuk Seri Mirza Mohammad Taiyab.

He said over 630,000 tourists from India visited Malaysia last year, putting it in sixth place as a popular tourist destination for Indian nationals.

"Tourism Malaysia is always looking for new destinations in the country to be promoted to tourism operators across the world and in conjunction with Visit Perak Year 2017, a number of initiatives at a higher level have been undertaken, including putting Perak in the tourism itinerary for tourists from India.

"For this, Ipoh will be introduced as one of the new Singapore-Penang cruise holiday destinations. After arriving in Penang, the tourists from India will be taken to Perak by bus and then to Kuala Lumpur before returning home," he told reporters at the India-Perak Travel Mart, here, last night.

For the event, 63 tourism agents from India were taken to Perak to be introduced to the state's attractive tourism products.

Also present was State Tourism, Arts and Culture Committee chairman, Datuk Nolee Ashilin Mohammed Radzi.

Mirza said Perak had the potential to be a choice destination for tourists from India as it had interesting places to visit and about 50,000 Indian tourists were expected to visit Perak this year.

"They are more into family travel, thus theme parks are important, and Perak has theme parks such as the Lost World of Tambun and Movie Animation Park Studios (MAPS), which will be ready soon.

"Besides that, tourists from India place importance on the availability of vegetarian food. In Ipoh, there's Little India for visitors to savour Indian food and there are other tourist spots to visit such as like Gua Tempurung," he said.

Mirza also thanked the state government and local tourism industry players for actively carrying out various efforts including a series of familiarisation programmes with foreign tourist agents to promote Perak in the international travel market. -- Bernama