According to the Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board, international tourist arrivals dropped to 4,332,722 compared to 26,100,784 recorded in 2019, a decline of 83.4 percent.
The massive drop in international tourist arrivals is attributed to the closure of Malaysian borders since March 18, 2020 due to the spread of the Covid-19 outbreak.
According to the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), Asia and the Pacific recorded an 84 percent decrease in arrivals.
Malaysia’s neighbouring ASEAN countries also saw a significant decline in the number of tourists, including Thailand (-83.2 percent), Singapore (-85.7 percent), Vietnam (-78.7 percent), and Indonesia (-75 percent), according to the data from the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) and National Tourism Organisation (NTO).
Negative growth had been observed for tourists from every market, namely short-haul market (-83.5 percent), medium-haul market (-84.7 percent), and long-haul market (-79.7 percent).
ASEAN countries or the short-haul market remains as Malaysia’s top contributor with a 68.1 percent share of tourist arrivals (2,949,363), followed by the medium-haul market with a domination of 20.1 percent share, which includes East Asia and South Asia (870,314).
The long-haul market share was 11.8 percent, with 512,484 tourists from West Asia, Middle East, America, Oceania, Europe, and Africa.
Top ten international tourist arrivals to Malaysia were from Singapore (1,545,255), Indonesia (711,723), China (405,149), Thailand (394,413), India (155,883), Brunei (136,020), South Korea (119,750), Japan (74,383), Australia (72,680), and Vietnam (64,184).
In terms of overall tourist expenditure, the top five contributors came from Singapore, Indonesia, China, India, and Thailand according to Tourism Malaysia.
Senior Minister for Security, Ismail Sabri Yaakob has given the green light for domestic tourism movement within states under the recovery movement control order (RMCO).
“The meeting today has agreed to allow tourism within and between states under RMCO.
“But tourists will need to use vehicles registered under the tourism ministry,” he said in a press conference yesterday [March 9].
However, international borders are still closed for tourism purposes and the greenlight is only for domestic tourism. Malaysia is not alone in registering negative growth in the number of tourist arrivals.
