Malaysia welcoming more tourists in the lead-up to VM2020

Tourist wandering around and about at the Suria Park at KLCC whle enjoying the views of fountains creating rainbows along with it. — Filepic

With about a month left to Visit Malaysia 2020 (VM2020), the country is more than ready to welcome even more tourists. This year itself, Malaysia saw an influx of international visitors during the first three quarter of 2019.

Between January and September, Malaysia welcomed 20.1 million (20,109,203) international visitors, a 3.7% growth compared to the same period last year.

The first three quarters of the year also saw tourism receipts increased by 6.9% to reach RM66.14bil compared to RM61.85bil for the same period last year.

Tourism performance grew in terms of per capita expenditure, rising by 3.1% to RM3,289.3 while the average length of stay climbed by 0.1 nights to 7.4 nights.

Top 10 international tourist arrivals were from Singapore (7,868,755 tourist arrivals), Indonesia (2,792,776), China (2,413,956), Thailand (1,442,224), Brunei (929,789), India (539,167), South Korea (508,080), Vietnam (323,393), Japan (321,283) and the Philippines (317,294).

The main contributors to the tourist expenditure were from Singapore (RM16.3bil), China (RM12.8bil), Indonesia (RM8.8bil), Thailand (RM2.8bil) and India (RM2.5bil).

Malaysia aims to see 30 million international tourist arrivals next year, and bring in total tourist receipts of RM100bil.

VM2020 is the fifth edition under the Visit Malaysia tourism campaign; the first was in 1990, which was also launched by the then (and now, current) Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.