MALAYSIA registered 22.05 million tourists in 2008, surpassing the 21.5 million target set by the government under the Ninth Malaysia Plan. This is an overall increase of 5.1 per cent compared to 2007, according to figures produced by the immigration department of Malaysia.
The month of December registered the highest number of tourists with arrivals of 2,058,684, an increase of 9.2 per cent compared to the same month last year.
The top ten tourist generating markets for December 2008 were Singapore (1,030,013), followed by Indonesia (251,118), Brunei (166,043), Thailand (122,776), China (including Hong Kong & Macau) (71,566), India (49,175), Australia (45,724), the Philippines (39,684), Japan (37,776) and United Kingdom (36,131).
Singapore registered the largest number of tourists in 2008, contributing 49.9 per cent of the total arrivals. This was followed by Indonesia (11.0 per cent), Thailand (6.8 per cent) and Brunei (4.9 per cent).
