All Tourists Are Visitors But Not All Visitors Are Tourists

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A BERNAMA report was published early this month with the heading “Govt Targets 47 Mln Tourists In 2026, Outlines Three Strategies For VM2026”.
A sentence in the report stated that Malaysia recorded 38 million foreign visitors in 2024, marking a 31.1% increase from the previous year.
I wish to point out that the 38 million ‘foreign visitors’ in the above sentence was correct, as we received 25 million foreign tourists plus 13 million foreign excursionists in 2024.
In other words, tourist arrivals were still below that of 2019 when we had 26.1 million, while excursionist arrivals shot up from 8.9 million to 13 million.
Therefore, the heading must be wrong in stating that we are targeting 47 million ‘tourists’ in 2026 when it should be ‘visitors’.
Tourists and visitors are two words that are often interchanged, which may be acceptable when used generally. But when reporting statistics, they are technical terms with different meanings.
Foreign visitors include tourists that stayed at least one night in Malaysia, and also excursionists that don’t, as they enter and exit the same day.

In 2020, I was the first to combine tourist arrivals with excursionist arrivals, pointing out we had 35 million visitor arrivals in 2019. But the term ‘visitor arrivals’ was seldom used, and many people are still unclear to this day.
In the last two years, the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture (MOTAC), including Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board (TM), preferred to highlight visitor arrivals instead of tourist arrivals.
This is MOTAC’s prerogative, but when comparing tourist arrival figures with other countries, apple to apple comparison should be made.
According to  the latest TM’s Infographics on “Visitor Performance to Malaysia”, the figures posted are still until April 2025.

For the first four months, tourist arrivals were 8,356,921 and excursionist arrivals 5,027,563. Therefore, visitor arrivals totalled 13,384,484.
If this rate were to be repeated for the next eight months of the year, then tourist arrivals for 2025 will surpass 25 million, excursionist arrivals exceed 15 million, and total visitor arrivals above 40 million. The highest number of tourist arrivals was in VMY 2014, at 27.4 million.
Undoubtedly, tourism in our country is heading in the right direction. However, we should not gloss over visitor arrival figures, treating them as tourist arrivals, which is misleading.
Tourist arrivals are crucial for accommodation providers, and they include licensed hotels and private residences used for short term rentals, although a substantial number stay in their holiday homes here, or with relatives and friends.
Combined, excursionists spend a huge amount on local transport, shopping, food and beverage.
YS Chan is master trainer for Mesra Malaysia and Travel and Tours Enhancement Course and an Asean Tourism Master Trainer. He is also a tourism and transport business consultant.

The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of  MMKtT.
- Focus Malaysia.

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