Following the reopening of borders and the broad-based resumption of international travel in 2022, visitor arrivals to ASEAN have been increasing over the past few months.
Malaysia has outperformed, with tourist arrivals as of December 2022 recovering to 92% of December 2019 levels, driven by visitors from Singapore, said Standard Chartered (SC) in the recent Global Research Report.
Across Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam (ASEAN-6 excluding Malaysia), total visitor arrivals have recovered to 60% of 2019 levels on average.
Excluding tourists from China and Hong Kong, tourist arrivals from ASEAN-6 (excluding-Malaysia) have recovered to 75% of 2019 levels. The slower recovery in arrivals from China and Hong Kong is due to their more recent border reopening.
“We estimate that arrivals are only back to 18.4% of pre-pandemic levels,” said SC.
From a current account perspective, SC expects Thailand to record the largest improvement in its travel balance this year, followed by Malaysia.
In 2022, Thailand’s travel balance improved to 0.8% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from 0.1% in 2021, still far short of the 2017-19 average of 8.6% of GDP. Malaysia’s travel balance improved to -0.1% of GDP in 2022 from -0.9% in 2021, but was still below the 2017 to 2019 average of +2.2% of GDP.
Improving travel balances should continue to support the Thai baht (THB) and Malaysian ringgit (MYR).
