Why Malaysia’s tourism boom lives and dies on a Chinese app

Stand on the pedestrian crossing outside McDonald’s in Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur, and you will understand something about how travel works in the 21st century. To the office workers and taxi drivers streaming past, it is just another junction in Malaysia’s biggest city. Yet Chinese tourists will often stop at the side of the intersection, phones raised, capturing a sight only RedNote taught them to see. This is the new geography of Malaysian tourism: shaped less by guidebooks or travel agents.