KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) – Two airplane catastrophes put Malaysia on the map in a bad way in 2014. But they didn’t hurt the country’s tourism, and the higher visibility may even have helped: visitor numbers had their strongest growth in years.
For the past decade, Malaysia has run an elaborate campaign to market itself abroad as an ideal Asian destination, touting a multiethnic culture, lush rainforests and pristine beaches. Despite the effort to internationalize, its tourism industry still relies heavily on tightly-packed neighboring Singapore and in a renewed push the government had designated 2014 as “Visit Malaysia Year.”
So when Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing with 239 people on board en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, it put the global spotlight on Malaysia and seemingly dealt a blow to its tourism strategy. A double whammy came four months later when a Malaysia Airlines jet was shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.
Tourism, however, grew at its fastest pace since 2008.
Figures for all of 2014 haven’t been released yet but the January-October data shows 22.9 million visitors, a jump of nearly 10 percent from a year earlier. That far outpaced 2.5 percent growth for the same period in 2013 and a 0.7 percent rise in 2012. The full year growth rates for those two years are close to the 10-month figures.