Originally Posted by IAN-UK

Not sure I entirely understand the premise. Malaysia offers a diverse and (generally) well promoted tourism product. They were at the recent London world travel market in some force.

Malaysia tourism has suffered from SE Asia hubs focussing on BKK and SIN. Cheap fares and the volume of capacity offered into Bangkok (and to a lesser extent, Singapore) makes BKK the key regional gateway for visitors from Europe, and from the US.

There has been significant Malaysian effort placed on promoting tourism from the rest of Asia (thank you Air Asia), perhaps less selling the place to Europe.

ASEAN statistics for 2014 suggest Malaysia is the top county in the region in terms of tourism arrivals (getting on for 10% ahead of Thailand and way ahead of Singapore).

But for Malaysia, intra-regional arrivals represent over two-thirds of the country's total: for Thailand, it's a quarter of all arrivals, while Singapore is close to 50:50. Thailand gets around twice the extra-regional tourists Malaysia welcomes, Singapore 10%-ish more.

Malaysia might come across as something less exotic than Thailand, though East Malaysia provides exotica in spades. To suggest Malaysia is beach-lite, or its food doesn't pack a punch is, well, odd.



BTW - I wonder if "Andaman islands" isn't a name best reserved for the far more remote Indian archipelago.