Ministry aims to liberalise visa application

GEORGE TOWN: The Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry has formed a working group to prepare a proposal to the Home Ministry on liberalising visa entry applications to Malaysia.

Deputy Minister Muhammad Bakhtiar Wan Chik said this was one of the ways to achieve higher tourism targets.

He said tourist arrivals from non-Asean countries increased by almost 20% in 2018.

“The number of tourists from China and South Korea increased by nearly 30% in 2018,” told a press conference after holding a meeting with key state tourism industry players at Bayview Georgetown Hotel here yesterday.

However, he said, tourist arrivals from Asean countries saw a slight dip especially those from Singapore and Brunei.

Muhammad Bakhtiar said the number of days that tourists spent in Malaysia had also increased.

“Tourists used to stay for 5.79 nights but this has increased to 6.5 nights now.

“Arab tourists spent the most number of days in Malaysia with an average of 10.9 nights.

“They spent about RM11,628 per capita per trip,” he said.

Meanwhile, in conjunction with Visit Malaysia Year 2020, he said the ministry was targeting 30 million tourists with RM100bil in tourist revenue. Muhammad Bakhtiar also identified Russia and India as the countries with emerging number of tourists.