Malaysia sees 3.7% increase in international arrivals ahead of Visit Malaysia 2020

As the year comes to a close and Malaysia gears up for Visit Malaysia 2020, the country showed positive development in tourist arrivals between January to September 2019. According to statistics from Tourism Malaysia, international tourist arrivals to Malaysia went up by 3.7% to 20,109,203 tourists during the period. This was compared to 19,386,115 tourists for the same period in 2018.

The top 10 countries with the highest contribution of tourist arrivals were Singapore (7,868,755), Indonesia (2,792,776), China (2,413,956), Thailand (1,442,224), Brunei (929,789), India (539,167), South Korea (508,080), Vietnam (323,393), Japan (321,283) and the Philippines (317,294).

The short haul market retained its position as the largest contributor of tourists to Malaysia with a share of 68.7%. Additionally, the total share contribution of tourists from the medium haul market was 21.6% while the share of tourists from long haul market was 9.7%.

Meanwhile, tourist expenditure for the same period in 2019 reached RM66.14 billion compared to RM61.85 billion for the same period last year, increasing by 6.9%. Singapore (RM16.3 billion), China (RM12.8 billion), Indonesia (RM8.8 billion), Thailand (RM2.8 billion) and India (RM2.5 billion) were the main contributors to the tourist expenditure.

According to Tourism Malaysia, per capita expenditure for the period of January to September 2019 also grew by 3.1% from RM3,190.5 to RM3,289.3. Meanwhile, the average length of stay went up 0.1 nights from 7.3 nights to 7.4 nights.

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(Photo courtesy: 123RF)