Why the year-long delay in tourist arrival data?

IF YOU are someone who relies on tourist arrival statistics to make decisions, preparations and reports, you would have noticed that in 2011, only the data for January was posted on Tourism Malaysia's website.

The remaining 11 months' data was available a year later, last week.

Past tourist data is important to forecast future trends and to gauge the health of the services sector.

A decade ago, monthly tourist arrival data was available within a matter of three months or so.

The Minister of Culture, Arts and Tourism Datuk (now Tan Sri) Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadzir during his tenure (1999 and 2004) managed to effect changes that saw data being available within a month to the public. January data were available in February.

In 2006, a real-time tourist arrival system was being worked on. Tourism Minister Datuk Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said that his ministry was working on taking over the task of tabulating foreign tourist arrivals, to provide prompt data.

That year, arrival data for January was only available in May and February data in June.

This real-time system, he said, would involve the Immigration Department, suppliers and the Treasury .

It looked like all systems go when a year later in 2007, Tourism Malaysia said that it would be up and running by end-2007.

Yet, nothing has happened to date.

Why this delay?

Was it because after January 2011, total arrivals contracted in the January 2011 to November 2011 period compared with the previous corresponding period in 2010?

It was the month of December 2011 which helped budge full-year arrivals into the positive territory. In 2011, arrivals improved 0.6 per cent from previously. Arrivals from 20 markets declined last year.

In November, the ministry provided the January to June 2011 data in Parliament but no figures were uploaded on its website.

Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Ng Yen Yen said that it has problems getting real-time data.

The minister suggested that the data is beyond her control and that we should go to the source to resolve this.

Let's assume that the source is the Immigration Department.

In an e-mailed response, the director general of immigration Datuk Alias Ahmad said that he would have to find out what the minister meant and that its system was capable of generating the statistics.

It has been 20 days since January 31 2012. Let's hope the monthly data is provided within a matter of weeks or couple of months and not a year!