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Billy Toh
KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 17): With Malaysia’s visitor numbers for 2017 seen as disappointing, an economist today said the country has to do more to attract tourists.
“I think something is lacking from the tourist arrival numbers, which is way below the target for last year,” said Socio-Economic Research Centre (SERC)’s executive director Lee Heng Guie.
“This is despite all the supporting factors such as a weak ringgit and (Malaysia hosting the Southeast Asia Games) in 2017. There is a need for an indepth study to understand why the tourists are not coming,” Lee said during a media briefing on the nation’s economic outlook.
In the first 10 months of 2017, Malaysia’s tourist arrivals fell 2.5% to 21.5 million, from 22.1 million during the same period of 2016. This makes up only 69.4% of the government’s target of 31 million tourists arrivals for the whole of 2017.
Lee pointed out that while the number of tourists from China grew by 8.1% to 1.9 million during the January-October period, it is still below the target set by the Tourism and Culture Ministry.
The situation in Malaysia is in stark contrast to Thailand which saw a record number of foreign tourists in a single month in December 2017.
Bloomberg reported that tourist arrivals in Thailand rose 16% year-on-year to 3.5 million in December. The Thai tourism ministry’s permanent secretary, Pongpanu Svetarunda, said a new high is expected in January 2018, being the traditional peak season for tourism.
Lee said the Malaysian tourism sector could have been hit by a lack of advertising and promotional activities, as reflected by the lower budget allocated for 2016 and 2017.
But he added that with more incentives and allocation for tourism in Budget 2018, tourist arrivals may increase this year.
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