33 Million Tourists Expected To Visit Malaysia Next Year

PUTRAJAYA (Malaysia), Oct 14 (Bernama) -- A total of 33 million foreign tourists are expected to visit Malaysia next year, said Tourism Malaysia director-general Mirza Mohammad Taiyab. He said the target was achievable through the hosting of the 2017 Kuala Lumpur SEA Games and the Visit ASEAN@50 in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of ASEAN. "Through this initiative, we have been planning to promote ASEAN to the world and the SEA Games will also give a lot of publicity among the regional countries," he told reporters after the Tourism Malaysia Networking Day with Lexis Hotel Group at the Tourism and Culture Ministry here Thursday. In addition, he said the ministry was optimistic to achieve the target of 30.5 million tourist arrivals with US$24.5 billion (RM103 billion) in revenue to the country by the end of this year. "We showed a growth of 4.9 per cent in the first six months of this year and to achieve the target, the minimum growth rate is 10 per cent. So we hope that the number will increase in the second half of the year. "Markets such as China, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Brunei showed a good increase because they are closer (to us)," he said. --BERNAMA