After the years of the COVID-19 pandemic that plagued the world, Malaysia seems to be seen as one of the most popular holiday destinations in Southeast Asia.
Airbnb has today released its travel trends report for the first half of 2024, and the company showed that Malaysia saw a 30 percent year-on-year increase in vacation bookings through their platform compared to last year.
In the first half of this year, Airbnb reported that Kuala Lumpur showed the second highest number of accommodation bookings in Southeast Asia, only behind Bangkok, Thailand among tourists from abroad.
These tourists' favorite destinations include Kuala Lumpur, Johor Bahru, Penang, Petaling Jaya and Melaka. This is not surprising especially when previously, Kuala Lumpur was seen as the second most popular destination globally in the third quarter of 2022.
For domestic tourists, Airbnb has also shown quite interesting information. Although their tourist locations are seen as not much different from foreign tourists, two new locations that entered the top 10 areas visited by local tourists are Hulu Langat, Selangor and Kinta, Perak.
According to Mich Goh, AirBnb's head of public policy for Southeast Asia, India, Hong Kong and Taiwan said that this location is popular because it is a rural area full of natural beauty that is not too far from populated locations.
This also somewhat shows Airbnb's ability to offer short-term accommodation in interesting locations such as fishing villages in Kelantan and also high-altitude locations such as Cameron Highlands.
The increase in tourism in locations like this is also seen to help local residents to mediate local culture and earn money from local and international tourists to improve their livelihoods.