THE Tourism Industry was badly hit in the first half of the year as tourist arrivals and their expenditure dropped significantly, following the closure of international borders in response to the spread of Covid-19, Bernama news agency reported today.
Negative growth had been observed for tourists from every regional market namely short-haul market which fell by 69.1%, medium-haul market dropped 69.0% and long-haul market which recorded 58.8% decline from January until June 2020.
In the same period, tourist arrivals dipped 68.2% to 4,252,997 compared with the corresponding period in 2019.
Last year, we received over 13.3 million tourist arrivals from January until June.
Similarly, tourist expenditure in the first six months of 2020 also dropped by 69.8% to RM12.5 bil compared with RM41.6 bil in the same period last year.
Meanwhile, per capita expenditure showed a decline of 5.3% from RM3,121.60 in 2019 to RM2,956.10 this year.
The top ten tourist generating markets were Singapore (1,541,820), Indonesia (702,082), China (401,285), Thailand (348,133), India (153,873), Brunei (135,593), South Korea (118,594), Japan (73,201), Australia (72,103) and Philippines (64,311).
In terms of the number of excursionists, the country saw a decrease of 64.2% to 1,712,140 against 4,782,587 excursionists who visited Malaysia in the same period last year.
In March this year, the government imposed restriction on tourists entry and closed the borders after the announcement of movement control order in reaction to the covid-19 pandemic declaration by WHO. – Sept 8, 2020
