Hype hype hooray

This from The Star:

PUTRAJAYA: Foreign tourist arrivals in Malaysia has surpassed the target of 20.1 million while earning the country RM45.7bil in receipts this year, said Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor.

And again:

Now the Government has set new targets – 21 million by next week and 21.5 million by Aug 31 next year as the VMY campaign has been extended to that date in conjunction with Malaysia’s 50th Merdeka.

Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said the country also earned RM45.7bil in foreign exchange.

Sigh, such fantastic numbers to make us happy. But oh really? As to be expected, missing details in the report don't lend much credence to the boast. And as to be expected, if you want the truth, you just have to dig further.

On the day before the media bugles blared our achievement, the Bangkok Post carried an article in the travel section. It provided a snapshot of Thailand's tourism numbers:

The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) is on course to attain its target of 14.8 million foreign tourists this year who are expected to generate 547.5 billion baht.

According to its Governor Phornsiri Manoharn, 10.4 million tourists visited the country in the first nine months this year which was up 3.2 percent over the same period of last year.

The biggest group of the international travelers were Japanese (one million), followed by South Koreans (760,000) and Chinese (705,000), while the number of visitors from Australia and India gradually increased.

Surprisingly, it also carries more details on Malaysia's numbers. And that's where it gets interesting:

Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board is confident it can achieve its target of 20 million visitors and 408 billion baht (US$12 billion) in tourism revenue by the end of this year.

At the half-way mark this year, the country had welcomed around 12.4 million international travelers, an increase of 23.9% compared to the same period of last year. The biggest groups of visitors were from Arab countries (around 300,000) such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Hmmm.... hmmm.......

Let's see:
By year end, 14.8 million foreign tourists would have visited Thailand, generating 547.5 billion baht (or RM 60.2 billion). That's 6,200,000 visitors fewer than Malaysia's purported figure. Fewer yes, but it will draw in RM14.5 billion more.

Breaking it down further to bite-sized numbers: Each tourist to Thailand on the average would have spent RM4,067.56. With Malaysia, it's almost half the value, or RM2,176.19. And to think we in Malaysia thumb our noses on budget traveler strategies, believing there's no money there.

Need proof? What's most curious is the report reveals that Malaysia claims the highest number of travelers entering the country in the first six months were the Arabs - 300,000 of them out of 12.4 million, or a mere 2.5 per cent. Imagine that. The 12.1 million remaining tourists must have been so thinly spread from different nationalities. Either that or more plausibly, they're ashamed to even admit that most tourists are short-trip visitors from the region (think Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand). Why malu? Why butter facts?

Here's a lesson on facing facts from our neighbour down south. It's all there in Wikipedia:
In 2006, 9.7 million international visitors entered Singapore, generating S$12.3 billion or RM28.5 billion. On a per visitor basis, that works out to an average of RM2,938.14.

Indonesians were the largest group of visitors followed by China. Altogether 996,000 Malaysians visited the island (and probably spent scant :), hence bringing the overall average down.) All that seems to jive with Thailand's figures.

As for ours, i really really don't know when the dongeng stories will end. Whether tourism or angkasawan, will we ever learn to quit the hype? We ought to, you know; we ought to in a hurry because there's is a lot of truth to the old saying: Masturbation makes us blind.