Relax - Traveller arrivals last year better than expected

Relax

News

Article

FEWER travellers arrived here last year due to the recession, but the drop in numbers was not as severe as expected, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) said yesterday.

Last year, the number of tourist arrivals here fell by 4.3 per cent from the previous year to 9.7 million.

This exceeded the forecast of up to 9.5 million for that year, said STB chief executive Aw Kah Peng yesterday.

South Korea, the 12th-largest visitor-generating market with 272,000 visitors, registered the biggest decrease of 36 per cent.

Ms Aw said: “We can only guess that it is due to the weakened Korean won.”

Malaysia and Vietnam yielded the two largest increases in visitorship, of 18 per cent and 11 per cent, respectively.

Ms Aw said STB believes this is due to the availability of affordable air tickets from low-cost carriers.

Tourism receipts plunged by 19 per cent from the previous year to register $12.4 billion last year.

Ms Aw attributed the decrease in tourism receipts to the economic crisis, the H1N1 epidemic and poor consumer sentiments last year.

She added: “We can safely say that airfare and room rates fell by 20 to 30 per cent last year. This has affected tourism receipts.”

Indeed, the average hotel- room rate fell from $245 in 2008, to $191 last year.

Despite this, several hotels opened last year, including Park Hotel Clarke Quay, Ibis, and boutique hotels Wangz Hotel, Klapsons, Rider’s Lodge and Quincy. This added 2,740 rooms, taking the total tally of hotel rooms to over 41,000.

Ms Aw said: “Businesses take a long-term view.”

The business-travel, and meetings, incentives, conferences and events (Mice) sector also had a poor showing – attendance of events fell by 10 to 15 per cent last year.

Ms Melissa Ow, assistant chief executive of STB’s business travel and Mice Group, said: “Mice was particularly affected by the downturn in the first six months of the year, but things picked up in the second half.”

Interestingly, the cruise sector fared well, scoring a record high of 1.14 million cruise passengers last year. Half of the passengers were Singaporeans.

The STB attributed the strong showing to a greater variety of cruise offerings like Costa Cruises and Silversea Cruises.

cheryll@sph.com.sg

For more my paper stories click here.

Traveller arrivals last year better than expected

By Cheryl Lim, my paper | Wed, Feb 10 2010

Last year, the number of tourist arrivals here fell by 4.3 per cent from the previous year to 9.7 million.

Traveller arrivals last year better than expected

Keywords

tourist