According to the New Straits Times, Malaysia’s Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister Datuk Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah, recently stated that as of October, Sarawak received 34,100 health visitors generating a total of RM47.60 million receipts. Most of the visitors came from Indonesia, followed by China, Philippines and India.Abdul Karim made the statement at the state legislative assembly, while announcing that the Sarawak government will be undertaking a tourism master plan study.
As of October, he said that Sarawak received 3.76 million visitors arrival with an increase of 4.59% as compared to the same period in 2018. The top five sources of visitors were Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and China.
In conjunction with the Visit Malaysia Year 2020 campaign, Sarawak aimed to achieve five million visitor arrivals with RM8.18 billion tourism receipts.
Abdul Karim said healthcare tourism provided lucrative opportunities to the local private hospitals and medical practitioners, apart from benefiting the tourism and hospitality industry.