Malaysia tourism, an inferior good?

From Bernama:

MELBOURNE, Feb 21 (Bernama) -- Malaysia has started the year with an impressive 47,228 Australian tourist arrivals in January, a 21.5 percent increase compared with the same period last year.

This follows the 33.3 percent jump in Australian arrivals in 2008 to 427,076 from the previous year.

Tourism Malaysia Sydney director Shahrin Mokhtar said, Australia remained among Malaysia's top 10 tourist generating markets.

"Our performance in this lucrative market is reflected in the double digit growth in tourist arrivals from Australia to Malaysia over the past year," Shahrin said.

"Australians recognise the excellent value for money they get from visiting Malaysia," he added.

Inferior goods have an inverse effect in response to income. When times are tough, people trade down to inferior goods. Malaysia is seen as quite a reasonable destination to recession hit countries. Furthermore, we are relatively unscathed politically compared to certain neighbors (Thailand...cough).