KUALA LUMPUR: More than 1.02 million tourists from China and almost half a million tourists from India entered Malaysia in the first nine months of this year.
Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Tiong King Sing said comparing this year's figures with 2019's showed an increase of 42.2 per cent for tourist arrivals from China and 87.6 per cent from India.
Tiong said this proved that these countries were major tourism markets for Malaysia.
He said the number of tourists from China and India would increase even further with the visa exemptions recently announced by the government.
"Malaysia received about 1.5 million tourists from China and India from January to September this year.
"A total of 1.02 million tourists were from China, and 472,479 were from India.
"These two countries are among the important targets of Malaysia's tourism industry.
"Therefore, the implementation of the visa exemption initiative (for travellers from China and India) beginning December will have a positive impact on us, generating the economic growth of tourism-related industries, such as hospitality, retail and transport," he said during the minister's question time in the Dewan Rakyat yesterday.
He said this in reply to a supplementary question from Lim Guan Eng (PH-Bagan) about whether the ministry anticipated an increase in the number of tourists from China and India following the government's announcement of 30 days' of visa-free entry for tourists from these two countries from Dec 1.
Malaysian Inbound Tourism Association president Mint Leong said Chinese tourists had been making up a big chunk of Malaysia's tourism revenue.
She said Chinese tourists loved travelling to Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Sabah and Sarawak due to the direct flights to these destinations.
"However, the association feels that the number of Chinese and Indian tourist arrivals for this year still fell short of our targets.
"We had set a target of receiving three million to five million tourists from China this year, but we remain positive, as the figures provided by the minister were only until September," she told the New Straits Times.
She also said she was pleased with the fast growth of Indian tourist arrivals.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had announced the visa waiver on Tuesday.
He said the highest number of tourists to Malaysia in the Asean region were from Singapore and Indonesia, and the highest number of tourists from outside Asean was from China.
He had said the tourism potential from China was huge, and the pattern was similar to how South Korean tourists were flocking to Sabah.
Malaysia has visa-free facilities for Gulf countries Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq and Iran, as well as West Asian countries Turkiye and Jordan.
Anwar had said the 30-day visa exemption was in conjunction with the 50 years of diplomatic relations with China.
On Nov 24, the China Embassy announced that Malaysians could enjoy visa-free travel for up to 15 days starting from today to Nov 30 next year.
The Immigration Department on Monday had also announced that it would establish a task force to monitor the departure of tourists from China and India.
Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail had said this move was part of the government's efforts to strengthen security in preparation for the visa liberalisation, with surveillance reports issued regularly.