Malaysia hopes for substantial tourist arrival hike up to 2020
Malaysia’s tourism promotion agency Tourism Malaysia says it was possible that the country could receive 36 million tourists by 2020, a growth of 39 per cent from last year, which would propel proceeds from foreign visitors to $43.5 billion in that year.
Ammar Abd Ghapar, head of the agency’s secretariat for the Tourism Malaysia Visit Year 2020 campaign, said that this target was achievable with “well-planned programmes and promotions” in place.
“We are optimistic the number of tourist arrival will increase as we have seen from the Visit Malaysia 2014 campaign, which augurs well for our tourism development sector,” he said at the Visit Malaysia 2020 Media and Industry Player Briefing yesterday on the island of Labuan.
“In the history of visit Malaysia programmes, we have always seen a jump in tourist arrivals, thus helping to generate revenue for the country. As such, we need everyone in the industry to chip in,” he said.
Much of the growth will be attributable to Chinese visitors whose arrival numbers of two million last year have already surpassed the initial forecast of 1.2 million.
“However, with those numbers we are still far behind Thailand which has recorded ten million tourist arrivals from China last year, therefore, we must not neglect the huge market,” he said.
Malaysia recorded around 31 million tourist arrivals in 2017 and expects 33 million this year. Thailand, its greatest rival in terms of visitor numbers, welcomed more than 35 million tourists last year and aims at 37.5 million in 2018, numbers mainly driven by mass arrivals from China, while the country’s tourism infrastructure is beginning to crumble under the huge load of mass tourism.
Malaysia’s tourism promotion agency Tourism Malaysia says it was possible that the country could receive 36 million tourists by 2020, a growth of 39 per cent from last year, which would propel proceeds from foreign visitors to $43.5 billion in that year. Ammar Abd Ghapar, head of the agency’s secretariat for the Tourism Malaysia Visit Year 2020 campaign, said that this target was achievable with “well-planned programmes and promotions” in place. “We are optimistic the number of tourist arrival will increase as we have seen from the Visit Malaysia 2014 campaign, which augurs well for our tourism development sector,” he...
Malaysia’s tourism promotion agency Tourism Malaysia says it was possible that the country could receive 36 million tourists by 2020, a growth of 39 per cent from last year, which would propel proceeds from foreign visitors to $43.5 billion in that year.
Ammar Abd Ghapar, head of the agency’s secretariat for the Tourism Malaysia Visit Year 2020 campaign, said that this target was achievable with “well-planned programmes and promotions” in place.
“We are optimistic the number of tourist arrival will increase as we have seen from the Visit Malaysia 2014 campaign, which augurs well for our tourism development sector,” he said at the Visit Malaysia 2020 Media and Industry Player Briefing yesterday on the island of Labuan.
“In the history of visit Malaysia programmes, we have always seen a jump in tourist arrivals, thus helping to generate revenue for the country. As such, we need everyone in the industry to chip in,” he said.
Much of the growth will be attributable to Chinese visitors whose arrival numbers of two million last year have already surpassed the initial forecast of 1.2 million.
“However, with those numbers we are still far behind Thailand which has recorded ten million tourist arrivals from China last year, therefore, we must not neglect the huge market,” he said.
Malaysia recorded around 31 million tourist arrivals in 2017 and expects 33 million this year. Thailand, its greatest rival in terms of visitor numbers, welcomed more than 35 million tourists last year and aims at 37.5 million in 2018, numbers mainly driven by mass arrivals from China, while the country’s tourism infrastructure is beginning to crumble under the huge load of mass tourism.
