The Malaysian government has decided to suspend its tourism campaign, dubbed Visit Malaysia Year 2014, in China while the search for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 continues in the waters off Australia, authorities said.

Malaysia's Culture and Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri on Tuesday said the government has decided to suspend the tourism campaign, saying it would be inappropriate to continue with the tourism campaign when most of the Chinese are still awaiting news about the missing airlines.

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The Malaysian Airlines plane, which was en route to China from Malaysia, went missing on 8 March shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur. Most of the passengers onboard were Chinese.  Until today, the search for the missing plane has not yielded positive results.

Nazri also confirmed that the incident has already affected the tourist arrivals from China, after Malaysia saw about 1.6 million Chinese tourists last year. The confirmation came after several tour operators in China announced that they have already canceled their tour packages to Malaysia because of the massive drop in the interest of Chinese tourists to come to the Southeast Asian country.

Based on a Reuters report, a total of 11 Chinese travel agencies have already reported bookings cancelation. From hundreds of Chinese customers a month inquiring about tour packages to Malaysia, one travel agency said not a single tourist has asked about Malaysian tours since the MH370 incident.

Nazri said it would be appropriate to respect the feelings of the Chinese people regarding the incident and temporarily suspend the promotion of such tourism activity. Experts said the suspension of the tourism promotion could result to a slowdown in Malaysia's tourism industry.

However, economists said the slowdown in the number of Chinese tourists in Malaysia will not affect the country's economy. Last year, tourism expenditures by Chinese contributed just 0.4 percent of the Malaysia's gross domestic product.