Fan Bingbing’s role as Melaka tourism ambassador involves nearly RM500,000 in sponsorship, state assembly told

MELAKA: The appointment of Chinese actress Fan Bingbing as the Visit Melaka Year 2024 (TMM2024) ambassador involves a sponsorship amounting to RM498,347, the Melaka State Assembly was told on Tuesday (July 9).

However, state tourism, heritage, art and culture committee chairman Datuk Abdul Razak Abdul Rahman said the state government only spent RM77,850 or 16% of the total cost, with the remaining borne by several companies.

“The cost (RM77,850) borne by the state government is only for promotions and organising the programme in Melaka while RM420,497, which included flight tickets, accommodation, transport, ‘ground handling’, the cost of professional services and ‘projector mapping’ at Encore Melaka, is sponsored by several private companies,” he said in response to a question by Dr Mohd Aleef Yusof (PN-Sungai Udang).

To a supplementary question by Dr Aleef about the returns for the state government, Abdul Razak said it would be tabled after the TMM2024 campaign ends on Dec 31.

He said one thing evident was in terms of searches on Fan Bingbing’s social media, which showed she has 26 million followers.

“There were almost 1.2 billion searches about Fan Bingbing during the three days she was in Melaka, and the searches for Melaka alone reached 445 million.

“This is a high return to the state government,” he said.

He also mentioned that Melaka will be getting six international flights daily from China this September and October.

Fan, who has 63 million followers on Weibo (a social media platform in China similar to X) and 4.1 million Instagram followers, is commonly touted as the face of Chinese culture globally.

In addition to Chinese films, she has also starred in the Hollywood superhero film “X-Men: Days of Future Past”, as well as French and Korean films.

In 2017, Fan graced the cover of Time magazine and was also named among its 100 Most Influential People. – BK