PETALING JAYA: Although next week is designated as “balik kampung”, a time to visit one’s hometown and spend time with family, just half of the hotels in the country are fully booked.
Hotel occupancy is lower this year compared to last year’s Hari Raya season due to the proximity of the recent school holidays and the upcoming festive season, said Malaysian Association of Hotels (MAH) president Datin Christina Toh. As a result, Malaysians are choosing to return home for the celebration, she added.
“Furthermore, people have already spent too much money on travel during the Chinese New Year and school holidays, so hotel occupancy for the Hari Raya holidays is slow.”
“We are still hoping that tourists will book rooms at the last minute so that business at hotels will improve,” she said when contacted.
Toh added that hotels and resorts in tourist areas were seeing high occupancy rates.
MAH vice-president Lim Choong Sean, who is based in Johor, said that hotels in the state were seeing travellers mainly from Singapore.
“The occupancy rate of Johor hotels currently stands at 60% foreign tourists and 40% local visitors,” he said.
As for the coming Hari Raya holiday, he said that hotels in the city area of Johor Baru had an occupancy rate of only 50%.
“Meanwhile, resorts are seeing an occupancy rate of more than 70%,” he added.
Based on his observation, he said that people had been more cautious about spending their money in view of economic uncertainties and the inflation rate.
“These holidays came so soon, right after the March holidays, as most would have gone on vacation. School has just restarted too.
“International arrivals are still slow. Fewer countries are on holiday except for Indonesia,” he said.
The Penang chairman of MAH Tony Goh said that most hotels in town were seeing an occupancy rate of around 40% presently.
He estimated that this could increase by 70% during the coming holidays.
“Things would improve during the Raya week, with beach hotels in Penang expected to hit an occupancy rate of 85% and town hotels, 70%,” he said.
