Residents and visitors to Kuala Lumpur breathed a visible sigh of relief this week as the meeting of the Non Aligned Movement which brought government leaders from 116 nations to KL, and the satellite Organization of Islamic Countries one day meeting, drew to a close.

At last we became aware that the rest of the world did still exist. For around a week leading English language newspapers had devoted their first 5 or 6 pages almost exclusively to the event - the pride of a Malaysia whose took over the origanization of the meeting at short notice when scheduled country locations declined for various reasons.

It made absolute sense of course. The Malaysian hospitality industry is bleeding with one of the largest oversupply situations worldwide, triggered by poorly founded optimism on Kuala Lumpur as a MICE and tourist draw several years back. Occupancy has sagged for several years and average room rates are amongst the lowest in the region, especially in the business to luxury hotel sector.

Given the large proportion of Islamic country nationals visiting both events, a preferred target market for Malaysia's tourism sector, there was a hidden advantage too of course. Muslims in general can have multiple wives, and seeing many of them dont get on particularly well with the other wifies, that means lots of single rooms per entourage. That well accounts for the uncharacteritically sunny smiles on the faces of hotel honchos the last couple of weeks. Bar tabs may well have been down, but accomodation and room service was way up.

It seems a bit of a lonely town now. The papers are full again of local political bickering, we can finally drive on all the roads again and we can get back to business as usual...

It's great to be back...