Tourism demand for Malaysia: Further evidence from panel approaches

This study investigates the influence of price factors on tourist visits to Malaysia from 21 countries. The study samples chosen in this study are between 2000 and 2019, before the COVID-19 outbreak. Panel approaches are utilized on five regions. The results show that the tourism demand from Asian countries has a positive impact on tour prices and income, but these variables negatively affect the tourism demand from ASEAN and western countries. Most tourists in the regions choose Singapore and Indonesia as substitute destinations, while Thailand is a complementary destination for Malaysia's tourism industry. The findings are invariant among the regions. However, traveling costs do not reduce the tourism demand; hence, this factor is negligible for Malaysia. In addition, the tourism demand from ASEAN countries increases with a depreciation in Ringgit Malaysia, but the effect is the opposite for China, Asia, and western countries. The overall findings show that different regions react differently to price factors. (c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of College of Management, National Cheng Kung University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).