ON Feb 5, Reuters published a report “Malaysia misses 2024 tourist arrival targets despite reporting over 25 mln visitors”.
While it is true that Malaysia missed its tourist arrivals target, the figure of 25 million visitors is incorrect. This is because by last November, the number of foreign visitors was 34,156,179, comprising 22,464,611 foreign tourists and 11,691,568 foreign excursionists.
In recent years, I have written repeatedly to point out that media practitioners and government officials often regard ‘tourists’ and ‘visitors’ as nothing more than common words. I explained they can be tourism terms that cannot be interchanged, such as when quoting tourism figures.
When it comes to tourist arrival targets, Malaysia has been consistently missing them over the years. For example, the initial targets were 31.8 million (2017), 33.1 million (2018), 34.5 million (2019), and 36 million (2020). But actual arrivals were 25.95 million (2017), 25.83 million (2018), 26.1 million (2019) and 4.3 million (2020).
Granted, 2020 was hit by COVID-19 and the worst was in 2021, with only 134,728 tourist arrivals. For 2022, the initial target was 2 million and revised to 4.5 million in June. By the end of the year, total tourist arrivals were 10.07 million.
In March 2023, I projected that tourist arrivals would be more than 18m for the year and 24m in 2024. As they turned out, actual arrivals were 20.1 million (2023) and 25 million (2024). Earlier, new official targets were set at 27.3 million (2024), 31.4 million (2025) and 35.6 million (2026).
Back to the poser: Will tourist arrival targets be missed yet again? Yes, it is likely, but there is hope. Although the monthly tourist arrivals for last year averaged 2,084,725 or a total of 25,016,698 for 2024, as high as 2,552,087 arrived in December alone.
If this number is repeated for all 12 months in 2025, it will total 30,625,044 and not far from the targeted 31.4 million.
This could easily be achieved if both public and private sector tourism industry players redouble their efforts and loudmouthed politicians muzzle up voluntarily or by force of law. – Feb 7, 2025
YS Chan is master trainer for Mesra Malaysia and Travel and Tours Enhancement Course and an Asean Tourism Master Trainer. He is also a tourism and transport business consultant.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
Main image: Lonely Planet
