PUTRAJAYA, Jan 28 — The Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture expressed confidence today that it could meet this year’s tourist arrival target, even as China restricts traveling to contain a novel coronavirus from spreading.
Tourism Minister Datuk Mohammadin Ketapi, however, said there is a probability that the outbreak could drive the numbers down, but insisted it would be marginal.
China has over the years become a key tourism market for Malaysia. Its tourists were the third largest in foreign tourist arrival into the country last year and account for a third in tourism money receipt, official statistics showed.
“We won’t revise the target it’s still 30 million,” he told a press conference here.
“The impact (from the outbreak) is small and that is just (for) now.”
Yesterday, the government said residents from the Hubei province and its capital city of Wuhan have been temporarily barred from entering Malaysia, as public concern over the virus grows. The Philippines have also imposed a similar ban.
This morning, Chinese health officials said there were now over 4,500 new cases of 2019-nCoV infections with 106 recorded deaths.
Malaysia is among countries that have registered confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, with four reported so far.
The local tourism industry had said it expects the outbreak to hit business hard. Yesterday, the Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents president Datuk Tan Kok Liong warned that impact from the travel lockdown in China can already be felt.
But Mohammadin said the restriction is only limited to Wuhan, so the domestic tourism market can still benefit from the inflow of Chinese tourists from other cities.
“Chinese from Beijing, others, still can come in,” he said.
With a burgeoning middle class, tourists from China now account for the largest number of global travellers. Last year Chinese tourists spent over RM3.7 billion in Malaysia, a RM700 million increase from 2018.
The tourism ministry said today it has no estimation of losses expected from the Wuhan virus outbreak.
“It depends... if the numbers are big then it will be big but if it is small then it will be small,” he said.
