Malaysia had 22million Tourists in 2008

Below is the statement of the Honorable Minister of Tourism Malaysia in the Star, Monday January 12, 2009

More tourist arrivals, says Azalina

By FLORENCE A.SAMY

"HANOI: Tourist arrivals in Malaysia increased by 5.1% to over 22 million last year, compared with the 20.9 million in 2007.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Asean Tourism Forum here, Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said said despite the current global economic challenges, the tourism industry still managed to grow due to intensified promotional efforts.
»The Cabinet Committee for Tourism had set a 20 million tourist target for this year.

Tourist arrivals last month also reached a record high of 2.058 million, a 9.2% increase from December 2007.

Long-haul tourists showed the highest increase in arrivals, with Canada registering a 65.6% increase, followed by the Netherlands (63.3%), Russia (56%), France (44.4%), Norway (43.9%) and Germany (41.9%).

In the short and medium-haul markets, there was a 132% jump in the number of Iranian tourists, followed by Cambodians (52.9% increase), Indonesians (34.6%) and Indians (30.4%).
Singapore contributed the largest number of visitors to Malaysia, with 11 million arrivals last year followed by Indonesia (2.428 million), Thailand (1.493 million) and Brunei (1.172 million).
Azalina said the Cabinet Committee for Tourism had set a 20 million tourist target for this year and was banking on arrivals from Asean countries.

She said RM50mil would be allocated for the Asean market this year compared to RM30mil last year and more roadshows would be held in China and the Middle-East.

She said the focus this year would be on unknown markets and cities instead of capital cities. At the forum, Asean members signed a mutual recognition agreement to enable mobility of tourism professionals across the region.

The agreement enables member countries to exchange information on best practices in competency-based education and training of tourism professionals while providing capacity building opportunities across the region".

If you read it carefully, you will realise that Malaysia has the most 'tourist' arrivals compared to all other its other ASEAN counterparts.

SYABAS - Malaysia Boleh!!!!!!

Now, read it again............

Let us analyse it and take the Singapore arrivals as an example.

With less than 3 million people, Singapore can have 11 million tourist arrivals into Malaysia???? That will mean that every Singaporean will have to come over to Malaysia almost 4 times a year.
Maybe these figures include those Singaporeans that come over to Malaysia or rather JB to do their weekly or monthly groceries or Singaporeans that live in Malaysia but commute dailiy to Singapore to work. (They should not be taken as tourists because they are NOT)

Now, if those figures were taken into account for Singapore, the Ministry must have taken the same type of statistics for Indonesia (Workers & Maids), Thailand (daily commuters)

If we were to add up all the 'tourist' arrivals from ASEAN countries, it will come up to slightly more than 16 million. We are therefore left with another 6 million arrivals who I can safely classify as TOURISTS although some of them may only be business travellers.

Add that to 20% of the ASEAN arrivals of 3.2 million, we come up with a more realistic figure of about 9million.

Why do I say 9 million is a more realistic figure? Indonesia, with its population of 240 million were finding it hard to hit the 9 million tourist arrivals.

We on the other hand can boldly shout that we hit more than 22 million.....

Can you imagine that if we had 22 million tourist in 2008 and on the average they spend RM2000 per visit. That's a WHOOPPING (I dont know if my calculator can take it.....) RM440,000,000,000 (is that RM440Billion????). With so many zeros, I may be wrong.................

With this sort of income, its not a wonder that the people in power are saying that Malaysia will not be hit by recession.

We must remember that when we inflate or 'play' with a figure to show what is actually not there, we create a sense false happiness and satisfaction everywhere. This will inturn create a tsunami effect to the country where people will be thinking that "We dont have to work hard anymore to promote this country as we have more than achieved our target."

When this happens, it will be a very sad day because we will be a welfare nation.