Tourism is one of the best “by mean of mouth” form
of advertisement and till now Malaysia has been
smart enough to profit out of it.
But it is not all about Tourism. A flourishing touristic industry is the driver
for further development of the Country economy as Tourism is getting the
world attention that means, big multinational corporations’ attention that
means FDI inflow and so on. Tourism is one of the best “by mean of mouth”
form of advertisement and till now Malaysia has been smart enough to
profit out of it.
Changes in what are the “holiday habits” worldwide and a different way of
looking at retirement in the western countries have been the booster for
our local property market as we have seen it growing in the last few years.
More and more are the tourists that prefer to go for a short term rental of
a private house, where they can have the “I’m living here” feeling compared
to the “all included hotel packages” offered by travel agencies worldwide.
Compared to Europe, US and Australia, Malaysia is a country where a
western foreigner can have a high standard of life style at very affordable
levels, on top we surely have plenty of appealing places and attractions all
around the Country to satisfy the most demanding ones.
If we give a look at how much has changed the “skyline” of Pulau Pinang
(BatuFeringi and the old Georgetown in particular), Melacca and Kota
Kinabalu in the last 8 years thanks to high-raise buildings that have been
mushrooming almost everywhere there was a free piece of land and the
latest trend, started by Hatten Group in Melacca, of integrated Waterfront
developments now very common all around Malaysia we can easily
understand the impact of tourism on property developments. In Kota
Kinabalu after a slow start during the early 2000 we have now a full swing
movement of developers with many of the big market’s players fighting each
other in term of design, location, height and so on. Property prices have
been following the war accordingly and nowadays is quite difficult to buy
anything less than 450 RM psf in the whole Kota Kinabalu.
The market is asking if there is a forthcoming bubble for all the three
locations mentioned above as it looks like sky is not the limit for Property
Prices there. My personal take, looking at the current and forecasted
touristic situation, is that we are still in safe waters and there is still a lot that
can be done to increase the touristic inflow by becoming more and more
a worldwide recognized touristic destination instead of a mostly regional
one. Less than 10% of the total tourist arrivals in 2012 and 2013 were from
countries outside the SEA region and this gives a good sus F