A drop in Brunei visitors to Malaysia

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN: Borneo Bulletin reported that some 588,165 visitors from Brunei Darussalam visited Malaysia in the first six months of this year, down by 1.2 per cent, Tourism Malaysia revealed on Thursday.

Brunei is the fifth largest generating markets after Singapore, Indonesia, China and Thailand.

Asean saw a one per cent decrease in arrivals due to the change in recording arrivals based on nationality instead of country of residence; thus expatriates working/living in Asean countries were not regarded as Asean travellers.

This reflected in the decreased in arrivals from Singapore (-4.8 per cent), Thailand (-11.5 per cent), Brunei (-1.2 per cent) and Cambodia (-4.2 per cent).

Malaysian Tourism Minister, Dato’ Sri Dr Ng Yen Yen announced that Malaysia welcomed 11,632,483 tourist arrivals for the first six months of 2012, registering a growth of 2.4 per cent compared to 11,362,862 arrivals for the same period last year.

Correspondingly, total tourist receipts from January to June 2012 rose by 4.0 per cent, generating RM26.8 billion to the country’s revenue compared to RM25.7 billion in 2011.

Asean region continued to be the largest contributor of tourist arrivals with 73.8 per cent share of the total arrivals.

Among these markets the Philippines recorded the highest growth of 45.3 per cent year-on-year followed by China (34.2 per cent), Japan (32.5 per cent), Indonesia (20 per cent), India (6.9 per cent) and United Kingdom (5.9 per cent).

The minister attributed Malaysia’s appeal and growth in arrivals to the strong support from trade partners and the increased air connectivity to several key destinations such as Beijing, Hong Kong and Kansai.

Sourced: theborneopost