Tourism Industry: Tourism in Malaysia

Tourism in Malaysia started from the 1960s and it is one of the new forces in the economic sector but the growth was slow. Then, a tourism master plan was added into the Second Malaysia Plan during 1971-1975 and this marked the beginning of tourism as the country’s economic contributor that has become the second highest foreign exchange earner for the country after the manufacturing sector (Robiah S., 2007). In the early growth of the industry, Visit Malaysia Year (VMY) is a major tourism event was launched by the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Tourism (MOCAT) in the 1990s that it was extended to include other attractions. The major markets for Malaysia tourism are the neighbouring ASEAN countries, China, South Korea, Japan, India, Australia and United States. This event was a huge success which more than 7 million international tourist arrivals were recorded with a growth of 53.6 per cent. Moreover, the slogan ‘Malaysia Truly Asia’ is a large advertising campaign sponsored by the Malaysian government which is internationally recognized as a uniquely Malaysian brand to promote tourism in Malaysia. The Malaysian tourism industry had faced with several challenges such as the unstable world economics, politics, SARS and challenge posed by the other ASEAN countries competing to draw tourists had initiated Malaysia to set its own strategy in diversifying the tourist attractions. However, according to the Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board (MTPB), which called Tourism Malaysia (2008) aims to encourage tourism and its related industries in Malaysia. It is expected that tourism would help promote new investments in the country, as well as provide increased employment opportunities. The growth of tourism would also contribute positively to t...

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...destination in the world. Tourists from various countries around the world visit the place in large number every year. The tourism industry has shown a continual rise in the number of tourists, visiting Malaysia over the years. The available data shows that from 2000 to 2013 there has been an obvious increase in the number of tourists visiting Malaysia with a temporary decline during 2003 due to the effect of global crisis. Since 2000 the number of tourists visiting Malaysia was approximately 10.22 million tourists while the figure in 2013 has increased approximately 25.72 million tourists, these figures show that the number of tourists visiting Malaysia has increased by more than half. However, those tourists which come from the ASEAN countries is always higher that other countries. This may possibly due to easy and cheap access to Malaysia from those countries.