The year 2010 has begun on a positive note for Malaysia’s tourism industry.

Malaysia has registered a total of 1,896,918 tourists in the first month of 2010, an increase of 1.4% compared to the same period in the previous year.


Table 1: Comparison of tourist arrivals to Malaysia
(January 2009 and 2010)

The top ten tourist generating markets for January 2010 were Singapore (1,001,806), Indonesia (202,124), Thailand (97,050), China (including Hong Kong & Macau) (95,473), Brunei (67,544), Australia (54,136), India (48,426), United Kingdom (32,739), the Philippines (32,040) and Japan (30,757).

Among the top fifteen countries, double digit growth was recorded for tourist arrivals from South Korea (19.2%), India (15.7%), Australia (14.6%) and Taiwan (12.9%). Markets that registered marked decline were Brunei     (-33.8%), Thailand (-16.6%) and the Philippines (-10.9%).

Regions that have shown significant growth were Central Asia (43.7%), West Asia (22.0%), South Asia (20.3%) and Oceania (13.2%).

For more information, please go to Tourism Malaysia’s online Facts and Figures at http://www.tourismmalaysia.gov.my/corporate/research.asp?page=facts_figures.