Visitor targets remain elusive

By CY Ming

Over the past five years, the targeted number of visitor arrivals to Malaysia has been consistently revised upwards, although arrival figures remain about the same.

The actual arrivals and targets in brackets were 25,715,460 (26.8 million) for 2013, 27,437,315 (28 million) for 2014, 25,721,251 (29.4 million) for 2015, and 26,757,392 (30.5 million) for 2016.

The target set for this year is 31.8 million, and next year 33 million. Official results, which are released only until August this year, showed a 1.5% decline over last year for the corresponding period.

There are indications that visitor arrivals decreased further in September and October, bringing the 10-month drop to 2.8%.

If figures for the remaining two months are proportionate to the first 10 months, then total number of visitors for the year could be 25,719,605 – similar to 2013 and 2015 figures.

If so, how are we going to attract 33 million, or seven million more visitors for next year, when their numbers have kept dropping after the last Visit Malaysia Year (VMY) in 2014?

Making 2020 the next VMY is the sensible thing to do. We had a very successful first VMY in 1990 but we were overzealous in designating 1994 as the next, which was too close. We then had VMY 2007, and VMY 2014 would have been more successful if not for the MH370 tragedy.

In 2011, the Malaysia Tourism Transformation Plan was announced and the target was to attract 36 million visitors and earn RM168 billion in tourism receipts annually by 2020.

The target is unlikely to be achieved if we merely announce that Malaysia is targeting 33 million visitors in 2018, 34.5 million in 2019 and 36 million in 2020.

Not only must we redouble our efforts, this must be followed up with sound plans and concrete actions by both the public and private sectors working together.

For example, are there contingency plans for firefighting after selfish politicians go all out to exploit racial and religious issues to the hilt in the run-up to the coming general election?

An escalation of hate speech and fearmongering is certain to drive away more tourists and investors from our country.

Without effective promotions and great public relation exercises to assure visitors of their safety and security in Malaysia, tourism players will have to brace for a further drop in visitor arrivals.

CY Ming is an FMT reader.