KUALA LUMPUR, March 27 — Hotels in Malaysia will work to get more bookings from local tourists as well as those from Asian countries such as China, following some initial reports of booking cancellations after the start of the Iran war several weeks ago.
Malaysian Association of Hotels (MAH) president Datin Christina Toh confirmed that there have already been “trickles of cancellation”, but indicated that the full data from MAH members is not available yet.
She said MAH’s members have given feedback that such booking cancellations continue “to increase with more deferment and cancellation of events”.
“We are unable to crunch the numbers on cancellations as members have not been able to update us for now,” she told Malay Mail when contacted.
Toh said the general feedback from MAH members indicate that new hotel bookings have been sluggish: “The bookings are slow, and in some cases, with flight disruptions and cancellations, there are obviously change of plans for the long-haul tourists.”
As for factors that could affect the number of overseas tourists’ hotel bookings in Malaysia, Toh said this would include flight connectivity, fear of travelling due to the war, and increase in air fares.
To counter any loss in hotel bookings from overseas tourists, Toh said MAH is working together with Tourism Malaysia to encourage travel among those living in Malaysia in line with Visit Malaysia Year 2026.
“Together with Tourism Malaysia and other tourism stakeholders, we have recently met and engaged in a brainstorm session to jointly work on our efforts in focusing on regional markets (South-east Asia), China, other Asian countries and also domestic tourism,” she said.
MAH has over 1,000 members, while Tourism Malaysia’s latest online statistics showed there are 5,334 hotels in Malaysia with nearly 350,000 hotel rooms as of September 2025.
Based on Tourism Malaysia’s annual figures from 2016 to 2024, the bulk of hotel guests are usually those travelling within Malaysia, while international travellers typically account for around a third of hotel guests.
The figures from 2020 to 2022 showed a big dip in international hotel guests amid restricted global travel and lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic, but it has since bounced back to around a third of total hotel guests in 2023 and 2024.
The total number of Malaysia’s hotel guests has continued to grow to 93.3 million in 2023 and 100.1 million in 2024, far above pre-pandemic levels.
Tourism Malaysia’s data on the total number of hotel guests for the entire 2025 is not available yet, but had already hit 76.3 million from January to September 2025 — 2.6 million higher than the same nine-month period in 2024.
Again during this period in 2025, most of them were domestic hotel guests at 49.18 million, while international hotel guests totalled 27.15 million.
If the trend continues, it is possible for local travellers to help buoy demand for hotel stays.
