Chinese to drive Malaysia tourism

Chinese tourists who have been the prime driver in terms of growth across Southeast Asia in the last decade will carry on supporting Malaysia’s tourism growth, says a Malaysian research house.Maybank Kim Eng explains in a report published last week that it anticipates more Chinese to visit Malaysia.As Chinese visitors spend more than others, the research house expects more inbound Chinese visitors in 2019 and will moderate the unfavorable effect of fewer Singaporean visitors on the Malaysian tourism industry.Even though Malaysia’s tourist arrivals went down 0.4 percent year-on-year in general to 25.83 million last year, Chinese inbound tourists surged 29 percent to 2.94 million.