Malaysia among World’s Top 10 Tourism Destinations

Malaysia is listed among World’s Top 10 Tourism Destinations by international tourist arrivals of United Nations World Trade Organisation (UNWTO) Tourism Highlights 2012. It has also been the only country in South East Asia to make the top 10, scoring surprisingly better than Thailand. UNWTO ranks countries according to the two key tourism indicators – international tourist arrivals and international tourism
receipts. Although Malaysia was ranked in top 10 for international arrivals, in terms of international tourism receipts it was 14th.

The ranking did not change a lot compared to last year, except Turkey climbed one place to 6th in World’s Top Tourism Destinations List pushing UK to 7th position. World’s Top 10 Tourism Destinations By International Arrival


1 - France (79.5 million)
2 - United States (62.3 million)
3 - China (57.6 million)
4 - Spain (56.7 million)
5 - Italy (46.1 million)
6 - Turkey (29.3 million)
7 - United Kingdom (29.2 million)
8 - Germany (28.4 million)
9 - Malaysia (24.7 million)
10 - Mexico (23.4 million)

Malaysia offers something for every traveler from luxurious to budget hotels, great samples of Chinese, Indian and Malay cuisine, shopping to relaxed tropical island getaway.  The country has a high-tech infrastructure and things generally work well and more or less on schedule. And prices remain more or less reasonable.

Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur

But there is one lucky factor which is inflating Malaysia tourist arrival numbers: Singapore. The residents of this small and rich island nation makes up majority of international tourist arrivals to Malaysia. For example, A total of 11,632,483 tourists visited Malaysia for the first six months of 2012 and 5,832,330 or almost 50% came from Singapore. Since Singapore is a very small city state, many residents regularly travel to Malaysia, especially to Johor for food, shopping, entertainment and sometimes holiday (some people goes there every week to fill-up the tank and are probably counted as international arrivals again and again). The arrivals to Malaysia from Singapore in first 6 months of 2012 are more than the population of Singapore!