Middle Eastern tourists spend the most in Malaysia

Tourists are among the many people crossing a busy street in Kuala Lumpur. — FAIHAN GHANI/The Star

PETALING JAYA: Middle Easterners are Malaysia's biggest spending foreign tourists, with each person shelling out an average of RM10,502 per person during their holiday here this year.

In second place are vacationers from the United Kingdom with a per capita spending of RM6,139 while visitors from China are third at RM5,721, according to Tourism Malaysia figures for January to June this year.

Overall, the average per capita spending of an international tourist to Malaysia grew 5.3% to RM3,288 this year compared with RM3,121 in 2019, the year before the pandemic started.

While Middle Easterners are Malaysia’s top spending foreign tourists, they are a relatively small group making up just 56,592 or 0.6% of the 9.16 million arrivals from January to June this year.

The biggest source country for Malaysia’s international tourism is Singapore with 3.88 million arrivals, followed by Indonesia at 1.45 million and Thailand with 770,242.

Malaysia aims to draw more than 18 million arrivals this year.

Tourism Malaysia director-general Datuk Dr Ammar Abd Ghapar said the short haul market with visitors mainly from Asean countries is the top contributor to Malaysia’s international tourism arrivals.

The medium-haul market is meanwhile driven mainly by visitors from China, South Korea, India and Japan, while Australia, the United Kingdom and the US form the bulk of the long-haul market.

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Despite concerns surrounding the pace of China's economic recovery impacting international travel, Ammar said that there is a positive trend in Chinese tourist arrivals.

"Even though China's slower-than-expected economic recovery may cause its population to remain hesitant to spend money abroad, we did see a steady increase in the number of Chinese travellers to Malaysia.”

Ammar said the preferences of Chinese tourists has changed following the Covid-19 pandemic.

“They are no longer interested in travelling in big groups but prefer to venture into niche tourism instead."

The figures also showed that while per capita has gone up in 2023 compared to 2019, the average length of stay for international to Malaysia has fallen to 3.9 nights compared to 6.2 nights.

Middle Eastern tourists again recorded the longest average length of stay at 8.7 nights for 2023 followed by the United Kingdom, Russia and France with all three countries recording 7.8 nights respectively.