Malaysia attracted over 170,000 visitors from the Gulf countries in 2013.

Tourism industry sources told Arab News that overall the industry performed above expectations in 2013, with tourist receipts of RM65.44 billion exceeding the initial target of RM65 billion.

The 8.1 percent growth from RM60.56 billion in 2012, represents an expansion of about RM4.89 billion in foreign exchange earnings.

However there was a drop in visitors from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Malaysia had received over 102,365 visitors from Saudi Arabia in 2012.

But in 2013 Malaysia received only 94,986 visitors from Saudi Arabia.

Tourist arrivals from the Iranian market also registered a significant drop of 38.5 percent partly due to AirAsia X’s decision to suspend its services to Tehran beginning October 2012.

In 2012, Malaysia had welcomed 127,404 visitors from Iran, which was dropped to 78,316 in 2013.

However, in general, tourist arrivals grew by 2.7 percent to 25.7 million (25,715,460) arrivals compared to 25.0 million (25,032,708) arrivals in 2012 despite a challenging year.

The top ten tourist generating markets from January to December 2013 were Singapore (13,178,774), Indonesia (2,548,021), China (1,791,432), Brunei (1,238,871), Thailand (1,156,452), India (650,989), the Philippines (557,147), Australia (526,342) and Japan (513,076).

According to the Minister of Tourism and Culture Malaysia Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz, the ASEAN market remains the largest contributor with 19.1 million arrivals, representing a 74.3 percent share of the overall tourist arrivals to Malaysia.

The medium-haul market was the second largest market with 4.9 million arrivals followed by the long-haul market with 1.7 million arrivals.

Double digit growth arrivals were also recorded for the following markets: Bangladesh (55.7 percent), Cambodia (28.6 percent), Iraq (27 percent), Egypt (25.3 percent), Russia (18.8 percent), Taiwan (18 percent), Ireland (13 percent), Vietnam (11.7 percent), Norway (11.6 percent), and Spain (10.9 percent).

A number of Malaysian firms have participated the health-care & medical tourism exhibition that concluded in Dubai on Thursday.