By Muin Abdul Majid
DUBAI, July 3 (Bernama) -- Malaysia was among several destinations that still reported encouraging results in terms of tourist arrivals for the first four months of 2009, amid an overall decline in numbers globally.
According to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), Malaysia was joined by other countries such as Morocco, Tunisia, Kenya, Mexico, Cuba, Chile, Uruguay, Taiwan, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
This was contained in the "UNWTO World Tourism Barometer", a publication of the UNWTO issued thrice a year, in January, June and October.
The UNWTO said that worldwide, international tourist arrivals declined by eight per cent between January and April, continuing the downward trend that emerged in the second half of 2008.
"Growth was negative in all world regions, except for Africa which bucked the global trend," said the agency.
Tourist arrivals to Europe were down 10 per cent during January-April while Asia and the Pacific region was down by six per cent.
The Americas did not fare too well either, down by five per cent.
The UNWTO said the Middle East reported a sharp reversal of trends in tourism (down 18 per cent) due in most part to the very strong decline for Saudi Arabia.
"Africa's growth of three per cent was very positive compared with the world's performance overall," the agency said, adding that this reflected the good performance of North African destinations as well as that of some sub-Saharan countries.
As the economic environment has rapidly deteriorated since the January issue of UNWTO World Tourism Barometer, the UNWTO has revised its forecast for 2009.
"The UNWTO now expects international tourism to decline by between four and six per cent for this year," it said, adding that the influenza A(H1N1) outbreak had introduced additional uncertainty into the picture.
-- BERNAMA
No comments:
Post a Comment