Positive Growth For Malaysia's Tourism Sector

BANGKOK, April 2 (Bernama) -- Malaysia, which attracted about 21 million tourists in 2008, can still harbour for positive growth despite the world economic crisis and recession in Singapore, its biggest tourism market, said the Pacific Asia Travel Association (Pata).

Its Strategic Intelligence Director John Koldowski said Malaysia had been doing extremely well in recent years.

While the recession in Singapore was bound to impact the number of travellers and money spent in Malaysia, there was still room for growth from the republic, he added.

"For instance, travellers who wanted to go to Beijing may now cross the strait and go to Kuala Lumpur. You lose some and gain some; at the same time Malaysia did well in attracting Middle Eastern tourists and this is likely to continue," he said after a briefing on the incoming Pata Tourism Forecasts 2009-2011 here Thursday.

Koldowski said the global slowdown was forecast to be strongest in the period between 2007 and 2009 where overall growth in the tourism industry was expected to drop to 3.5 per cent before improving to 4.9 per cent in 2010 and 5.1 per cent in 2011.

However, the previous stable growth of six per cent in the early period after SARS from 2004 was not expected to be re-gained in the forecast period, he said.

According to Koldowski, there was a cause for cautious optimism in the tourism and travel industry across the Asia-Pacific region, which was expected to see a rebound in the third and fourth quarter of 2009.

"The number of international arrivals, from both within the region and from long-haul source markets, are expected to remain largely positive but the strong growth rates of recent years will prove now to be the exception rather than the rule," he added.

He said that despite the expected increase, travellers are expected to change their way of spending money and vacation, with more people opting to fly economic class or on low cost carriers than business class, choosing four or three star hotels compared to five stars and spend less money at restaurants.

This, he said, was among the reasons why low cost carrier executives like AirAsia's Datuk Seri Tony Fernandes projected positive growth in the number of passengers despite the aviation sector in general showing a major slowdown.

International arrivals in Southeast Asia are expected to grow to nearly 77 million by 2011 (compared to 62.2 million in 2007) with only Myanmar likely to record negative growth.