Tourism Malaysia reports over 70% of negative growth due to COVID-19

Malaysia Tourism has reported negative growth for its overall performance, due COVID-19 which has impacted the tourism sector worldwide. The 

From January to September of this year, Malaysia welcomed 4,299,419 tourists, marking a 78.6% decrease when compared to the same period last year when Malaysia welcomed over 20.1 million tourist arrivals. 

For the same period, Malaysia received a total of RM12.6 billion, which is a 80.9% decrease compared to the RM66.1 billion received last year. Similarly, the per capita expenditure showed a decline of 10.7% from RM3,289.30 in 2019 to RM2,938.40 this year.

Malaysia Tourism also reported that the top ten tourist generating markets continue to be dominated by Singapore (1,543,627), Indonesia (710,118), China (403,055), Thailand (372,075), India (155,448), Brunei (135,848), South Korea (119,364), Japan (73,891), Australia (72,369) and Philippines (65,601).

As a result of the impact of COVID-19 on the global community, other countries too are not spared from the effects on their tourism performance. According to the data from the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), neighbouring ASEAN countries including Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia recorded similar decrease of more than 70 percent due to certain travel restrictions imposed to combat the pandemic in the respective countries.

Main photo credit:  Deva Darshan on Unsplash