TOURISM Malaysia has just released figures for foreign tourist arrivals for the first three months of this year.
Total number of foreigners that entered Malaysia in the first quarter was 98,053, up 288% from 25,256 for the corresponding period last year.
International travel hit rock bottom last year, with Malaysia recording a total of only 134,728 foreign tourists compared with 4,332,722 in 2020 and 26,100,784 in 2019.
In the decade between 2010 and 2019, average foreign tourist arrivals were 25.8 million per year.
Singapore, which has been contributing between 40% and 50% of all foreign tourists to Malaysia since 1965, has returned to its top position in the first quarter of 2022, after losing to Thailand, Indonesia and China in the corresponding period of last year.
Many people mistakenly believe that the high number of Singaporean tourists to Malaysia was because many of them drove to Johor for shopping and returning the same day.
But foreigners not staying overnight in Malaysia are not included under tourist arrivals. Foreign excursionists are counted separately.
In 2019, we received 26,100,784 foreign tourists and 8,944,841 foreign excursionists.
Combined, there were more than 35 million foreign visitors to Malaysia in 2019, before the first case of Covid-19 was detected in January 2020.
We received 1,768,656 foreign excursionists in 2020 and 265,137 in 2021.
Last year, most of the excursionists were from Thailand (258,638), Brunei (3,266), Indonesia (2,136), Philippines (525) and Singapore (421).
For the first three months of this year, most of the excursionists were from Thailand (61,602), Brunei (1,008), Indonesia (741), Singapore (336) and China (222).
Please note that these nationalities could arrive from anywhere and not necessarily from their home country.
Comparing the three charts on “Tourist arrivals to Malaysia by country of nationality” for 2020, 2021 and the first quarter of 2022, all the 47 figures were in the red for 2020 and 2021, and all black for 2022.
In 2020, international tourist arrivals dropped by 74% globally, with 83% for Malaysia.
This is because we have been more successful in attracting foreign tourists and we were hit harder by travel restrictions after countries started closing their borders.
This year, the Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry is targeting for 4.5 million foreign tourists and RM11.1 billion in inbound receipts.
If the pandemic is under control in most parts of the world we can expect more, but it can be less if Covid-19 transmissions were to spike.
Meanwhile, we can only plan to cater for the influx of foreign visitors and hope for the best.
But it will continue to be dicey if inbound tour operators put all their eggs in one basket, anticipating the return of the glorious years when they reaped a rich harvest.
