Malaysia drastically cuts Mideast visitor target, hopes AirArabia partnership can boost inbound numbers
*Correction made in Para 3 to reflect that the one million visitors announcement was made in 2017 and not in 2018
DUBAI - Malaysia’s tourism authorities have drastically cut their 2020 target for visitors from the Middle East from one million to 360,000, and hopes a new partnership with AirArabia will take off.
According to data from Tourism Malaysia, close to 400,000 visitors from the Middle East visited Malaysia in 2015 but numbers have been hit due to stiff competition from neighbouring destinations like Vietnam, Cambodia, and China. Mideast visitors bounced back up last year when around 316,000 arrived in Malaysia, up 25 percent from 2017. Visitors in 2018 spent a total of 2.7 billion Emirati dirhams ($735 million), an increase of 33 percent over 2017.
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