KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia registered 4.25 million tourist arrivals in the first half of 2020, down 68.2 per cent from the same period in 2019.
Last year, Malaysia received over 13.3 million tourist arrivals from January until June, said Tourism Malaysia in a statement today.
For the first six months of 2020, the tourist expenditure stood at RM12.5 billion, or 69.8 per cent from RM41.6 billion received for the same period last year.
Similarly, the per capita expenditure showed a decline of 5.3 per cent from RM3,121.60 in 2019 to RM2,956.10 this year.
The top 10 tourist generating markets were Singapore (1.54 million), Indonesia (702,082), China (401,285), Thailand (348,133), India (153,873), Brunei (135,593), South Korea (118,594), Japan (73,201), Australia (72,103) and the Philippines (64,311).
"Negative growth had been observed for tourists from every regional market namely short-haul market (-69.1 per cent), medium-haul market (-69.0 per cent) and long-haul market (-58.8 per cent) from January until June 2020," Tourism Malaysia said.
In terms of the number of excursionists, or the daily visitors to the country, Malaysia recorded a total of 1.71 million arrivals from January to June 2020.
This was a decrease of 64.2 per cent compared to 4.78 million excursionists who visited Malaysia in the same period last year.
The significant drop in the number of tourists and excursionists is attributed to the closure of international borders in response to the spread of Covid-19 virus.
"After the World Health Organisation (WHO)'s declaration of Covid-19 as a pandemic on March 11, the government imposed Movement Control Order (MCO) barring entry of international tourists beginning March 18. The effects of the pandemic on the tourism sector can be seen beyond the borders of Malaysia," Tourism Malaysia said.
According to the data from the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), negative growth in tourist arrivals is not unique to Malaysia.
Its neighbouring Asean countries including Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia recorded similar decrease due to the ban on international travel imposed to combat the pandemic in the respective countries.