PUTRAJAYA: In tandem with the ‘Visit Malaysia Year (VMY)2014’, the country has welcomed 7.09 million tourists for the first quarter of this year from 6.45 million tourists during the same period last year, a hike of 10 per cent.
Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board (Tourism Malaysia) said yesterday the top 10 tourist generating markets to Malaysia were Singapore, Indonesia, China, Thailand, Brunei, India, Australia, Japan, the Philippines and the United Kingdom.
“The Asean region continued to be the largest contributor of tourist arrivals with 72.1 per cent share of 5.1 million of Malaysia’s total arrivals.
“Among Asean countries, Vietnam registered the highest growth of 30.1 per cent, followed by Thailand (20.9 per cent), Cambodia (12.6 per cent), the Philippines (10.3 per cent) and Singapore (10.2 per cent),” it said in a statement here.
Tourism Malaysia said the medium-haul markets contributed 20.1 per cent or 1.4 million tourists to Malaysia’s total arrivals.
Countries that registered double-digit growth were South Korea (37.1 per cent), Saudi Arabia (21.4 per cent), Australia (19.2 per cent), New Zealand (14.6 per cent) and India (11.2 per cent), it said.
In the long-haul markets, a total of 0.5 million tourists or 7.9 per cent of Malaysia’s total arrivals were noted.
“The markets that posted double-digit growth are Russia (25.3 per cent), Italy (18.3 per cent), France (17.5 per cent), Germany (15 per cent), United States (12 per cent), the Netherlands (11.8 per cent) and Canada (10.4 per cent),” it added. — Bernama