KUALA LUMPUR, 9 JULY 2019 – The nation’s tourism industry recorded a positive tourist arrivals growth of +4.8% for the January-May 2019 period, registering a total of 10,954,014 tourist arrivals compared to 10,454,447 in the same period last year.

The short-haul market, i.e. ASEAN, maintained its lead as the biggest contributor of international tourist arrivals to Malaysia with a share of 69.2%, reflecting a +4.7% increase to 7,584,128 tourists compared to 7,245,570 tourists during the same period last year. The increase was fueled by positive arrival growth from markets such as Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand.

Meanwhile, the share for the medium-haul market was 21.4% with a +7.6% increase of arrivals to 2,347,789 tourists. This was mainly driven by market growth in East Asia (such as China, South Korea and Japan) and South Asia (such as India and Pakistan) which saw a rise of +6.7% and +11.0% respectively compared to the same period in 2018.

The long-haul market recorded a 9.4% share, down by -0.2% with arrivals of 1,021,228 tourists. This downward trend was mainly due to a drop in arrivals from West Asia, Africa and several European countries such as France, Netherlands, Spain and Sweden impacted by insufficient numbers of direct flights serving these markets to Malaysia.

The total arrivals to Malaysia for 45 main markets during the January-May 2019 period is attached. To download the data, please visit: http://mytourismdata.tourism.gov.my/

ENDS

For more media releases, media info and media features on Malaysia’s tourism industry, kindly visit the Media Centre of Tourism Malaysia’s website at http://www.tourism.gov.my/

MALAYSIA TOURISM PROMOTION BOARD OR TOURISM MALAYSIA is an agency under the Ministry of Tourism & Culture, Malaysia. It focuses on the specific task of promoting Malaysia as a preferred tourism destination. Since its inception, it has emerged as a major player in the international tourism scene. In 2018, Malaysia registered 25.8 million tourist arrivals and RM84.1 billion tourist receipts, placing it among the major tourism destinations of the world.

For press information, contact:

Muadz Samat
Assistant Director, Corporate Communication Division
muadz@tourism.gov.my
Tel: +603 8891 8755