National carrier Malaysia Airlines is preparing for a flood of Chinese tourists from now until the Lunar New Year period, scheduling 40 special charter flights.

Malaysia Airlines will be flying a total of 25 wide-bodied and 15 narrow-bodied charter flights from China until the 2004 Lunar New Year period, according to a statement released by the carrier to the Bernama news agency.

The Chinese New Year in 2004 will be celebrated in late January.

The first of the charter flights, from Xian, carrying a total of 230 passengers arrived at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport yesterday.

Another 122 passengers arrived late last night.

Other destinations in the pipeline are Urumqi, Wuhan, Chengdu, Shenyang, Kunming, Hohhot and Sanya cities in China.

The government is going all out to woo tourists from China as they are "good spenders", Culture, Arts and Tourism deputy minister Fu Ah Kiow (photo) was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times.

"We have set a target of a million tourists from China by next year and hope tour operators and hotels can work together in making this a reality," he said.

Five percent

"Experts from the World Tourists Organisations in China have predicted that about 100 million Chinese would be travelling around the world in 2020 and if we could catch at least five percent of that, it would mean five million tourists."

The first seven months of the year saw a 31 percent drop in Chinese tourists to only 5.3 million compared to seven million over the same period last year, the daily said.

"There has also been an increase in the hotel occupancy rate from 45 percent in May to 65 percent in June," Fu said.

Travel between China and Malaysia suffered during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome crisis. China was one of the worst-hit areas. Malaysia briefly imposed stricter visa controls on Chinese nationals. - AFP