Malaysia Was Southeast Asia’s Most Visited Country in 2025

By Danial Martinus  •  14 Jan 2026 in News

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Malaysia has once again become the top tourist destination in Southeast Asia in 2025, beating Thailand out for the second consecutive year.

Its win is credited to the country’s flexible visa policy, as well as improvements in infrastructure, making travel within the country and its main cities more accessible.

Exceeding its 2024 record

In the first 11 months of 2025 alone, Malaysia recorded a foreign footfall of 38.3 million people, which exceeded the total record of the year before, Tourism Malaysia says.

But what’s more telling is the gap between Malaysia’s numbers and that of Thailand, which recorded 32.9 million foreign arrivals in 2025, a steep 7% year-on-year decrease. It also marked the country’s first annual drop in international visitors in a decade (excluding the COVID-19 pandemic).

The Land of Smiles has always been a tourist hotspot in SEA, but possible factors that could’ve contributed to its decline in numbers last year include a series of kidnapping incidents, a deadly 7.7-magnitude earthquake that struck Myanmar and Thailand, border tensions with Cambodia, as well as severe flooding.

In fairness, all these things just amounted to a series of unfortunate events that coincidentally happened in the same year, slightly lowering the country’s tourism numbers. But this definitely gave Malaysia a leg-up, allowing the country to quietly sharpen its appeal.

One of Malaysia’s biggest advantages has been its travel policies, which includes visa-free entry for Chinese nationals, extended by the Malaysian government for another five years (with the option to extend it to an additional five years).

This makes a lot of sense if you’re thinking about footfall, since Chinese nationals make up one of the biggest tourist demographics in Southeast Asia.

Beyond numbers, though, Malaysia has consistently positioned itself as a stable, welcoming, and easy-to-navigate country. These are qualities that you can’t exactly quantify, but you can definitely feel once you step off the plane.

For foreign travellers, this translates to fewer hassles and much better connectivity compared to Malaysia’s neighbours. Add to that the fact that most people speak at least basic English and other regional languages.

But if this writer’s being completely honest, the one thing that probably keeps people coming back is our food and generally welcoming nature.

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