Regional Tourism Development in Southeast Asia
66
Table 3 represents the amount of tourism receipts obtained by Southeast Asian nations. The total tourism
receipts of Southeast Asian nations were amounted to $73.5 billion in 2011. Out of this total, available
tourism receipts earned by ASEAN 5 were $70.70 billion against BCLMV countries tourism receipts of
$2.80 billion. The pattern of receipts is almost similar (as indicated in Table 2), with Thailand the leading
earner (28.84%), followed by Singapore (27.34%), and Malaysia (25.58%). However, although Indonesia
and Vietnam attracted considerable numbers of tourists, The Philippines, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Brunei
Darussalam, and Myanmar has the potential to earn more from tourism.
Table 3. International tourism receipt of Southeast Asian nations, 2001-2011(in billion $)
Destination 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Brunei 0.10 0.10 0.10 0.20 0.20 0.20 0.20 0.20 0.30 0.30 0.30
Cambodia 0.40 0.50 0.40 0.60 0.80 1.00 1.10 1.20 1.20 1.30 1.40
Indonesia 5.30 5.30 4.00 4.80 4.50 4.40 5.30 7.40 5.60 7.00 7.70
Laos 0.10 0.10 0.10 0.10 0.10 0.20 0.20 0.30 0.30 0.40 0.40
Source: Euromonitor International from World Tourism Organisation (WTO)/Eurostat/national statistics.
The contribution of tourism as percentage of GDP is found to be higher in most of the ASEAN 5 countries
than BCLMV countries during the period of 2001-11 (Table 4). Important to note that the contribution of
tourism receipts to GDP of Cambodia, one of the BCLMV countries, was found to be significantly higher
compared to individual ASEAN 5 countries GDP contribution. It is imperative to note that the
contribution of tourism to GDP of BCLMV countries was almost similar to ASEAN 5 countries during
2005-06. However, not much diversity exists in terms of tourism contribution to GDP between ASEAN 5
and BCLMV countries. Therefore, it can be concluded that regional disparities are minimally present
between ASEAN 5 and BCLMV blocks. The importance of tourism earnings is appeared to be critical for
both regions of ASEAN. Thus, countries of both blocks will be benefited immensely if there is an
existence of strong co-operation between the countries. The correlation between tourists’ arrivals and
tourism receipts are also found to be positively related to tourism contribution to GDP.