Malaysia has recorded a total of 18,148,159 tourist arrivals from January to October 2008 compared to 17,322,214 tourist arrivals for the same period in 2007, representing an increase of 4.8%.

For the month of October 2008, tourist arrivals showed an increase of 8.6% with 1,818,304 tourists compared to 1,673,922 for the same period last year.

        Table 1: Comparison of tourist arrivals to Malaysia (October 2007 and 2008)

           Source: Immigration Department of Malaysia

For October 2008, Singapore maintained its position as the largest tourist generating market for Malaysia with 887,605 Singaporeans visiting the country. Others in the top ten list were: Indonesia (245,604), Thailand (142,848), Brunei (87,779), China (including Hong Kong & Macau) (74,780), India (44,831), Japan (40,080), Australia (38,408), the Philippines (36,415) and United Kingdom (31,554).

During the month of October 2008, the Netherlands market performed the best with a growth of 130.0%. Significant growth was also recorded for arrivals from Canada (127.8%), Russia (97.4%), Cambodia (88.6%), Germany (73.1%), France (71.1%), Indonesia (70.0%), New Zealand (59.7%), West Asia (54.5%), United Kingdom (51.3%), Switzerland (48.8%), Italy (45.5%), South Korea (42.2%), India (40.7%), the Philippines (38.8%), Japan (38.2%), Australia (26.4%), China (including Hong Kong & Macau) (24.5), Vietnam (24.3%) and USA (12.2%).

The top ten tourist generating markets from January to October 2008 were: Singapore (9,010,218), Indonesia (1,959,382), Thailand (1,243,355), Brunei (823,960), China (including Hong Kong & Macau) (802,956), India (459,079), Japan (359,871), Australia (346,423), the Philippines (323,974) and the United Kingdom (303,569).