They account for 10% of tourism receipts last year
By PAULINE NG
IN KUALA LUMPUR
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NOT content with a near 10-fold increase in West Asian tourists since the late 1990s, Malaysia plans to intensify its Look Middle-East policy to bolster tourism receipts.
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| Big spenders: Some 250,000 Arabs visited Malaysia in the first seven months of last year, spending an estimated RM5 billion |
Big-spending West Asians contributed more than 10 per cent of tourism receipts of RM49.6 billion (S$20.7 billion) last year, although they only constituted 2 per cent of total arrivals. In an economy hurting from plunging exports and shrinking oil revenue, rich tourists make a bigger difference.
Some 250,000 Arabs visited in the first seven months of last year, spending an estimated RM5 billion, media reports said this week.
According to Tourism Malaysia statistics, 437,129 people from West Asia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Iran visited the country last year.
About 10 years ago, the combined figure was 49,565. There have been occasional dips. For example Saudi and UAE arrivals last year fell 5 and 8 per cent respectively from 2007. But Iranian arrivals, at 63,165, jumped 132 per cent.
Indeed, Iranians have emerged as a group keen not only to visit, but also to settle in the country under its second home programme.
The growing ties have not escaped AirAsia, which has put Teheran on a wish list of cities it wants to secure landing rights to. The budget carrier's long-haul unit AirAsia X flies to Australia, London, China and India - but not West Asia. It's a point Transport Minister Ong Tee Keat alluded to earlier this week when he linked tourism with better flight availability.
Part of the tourism strategy includes expanding landing rights and creating new routes in the region for full-service and low-cost flights, Mr Ong said at the launch of the Marhaba programme - a retail sales-oriented initiative aimed at the Arab market to entice them to stay longer and to spend more.
He stressed the importance of 'opening new frontiers' to the wealthy oil nations and their 300 million people, and indicated that his ministry plans to work with the Tourism Ministry - now under a new minister, Ng Yen Yen following a Cabinet reshuffle - to ensure tourist arrivals this year are not dented too badly by the global recession.
The tourism industry has grown by leaps and bounds, attracting more than 22 million arrivals last year. In the 1990s, arrivals numbered less than 10 million. From 2000 onwards they began to rise as more resources were ploughed into the sector. In 1998, tourism earnings amounted to only RM8.6 billion.
As with last year, Malaysia is likely to benefit from Thailand's continuing political problems which have led to a state of emergency in Bangkok and some provinces. Some governments have urged their citizens to stay clear of Thailand for now.
In the last quarter of 2008, when political activists shut down Thailand's two main airports, Malaysia saw a last-minute diversion of tourists to places such as Penang, where hotels reported occupancy rates of over 90 per cent in December.
This continued in January, with arrivals to Malaysia rising 5 per cent year-on-year to 1,871,099. But it dipped to 1,613,309 in February. Three-quarters of arrivals are from Asean, mainly Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Brunei.
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