Published on : Saturday, January 31, 2015
New Chinese rules on outbound tours and to end illegal commissions was a major reason for the 26% drop in Chinese tourist arrivals from January to November 2014, feels the Singapore Tourism Board executive director communications and industry marketing, Oliver Chong. This drop caused a 3.4% decline in tourism for the country.
“The Chinese law hit everyone hard, the law was not a bad thing in itself,” Chong commented during a media briefing. “The tourism receipts were steady, even if arrivals were down.”
“First 11 months showed the Chinese who visited spent more, stayed longer… we reached out to top-tier cities with promotions. Length of stay for the current crop of Chinese visitors increased from 2.2 to 4.4 days.”
Inside no1STB released details of its tourism performance for January to November, 2014, that showed the city-state earned SGD11.8 billion. There was a decline of 3.4% in tourist arrivals that tallied 13.7 million, January to November.
Top visitor source markets were Hong Kong, South Korea, Vietnam and China.
Travel from China declined despite heavy promotions including a “New Discoveries” campaign and a micro movie that topped 10.4 million views in just two months on Youku.
Chong ceded there was no feedback on booking materialisation from the views.
“We are not able to track bookings on these campaigns… we are looking for a long-term impact, building awareness,” he said.
Chong confirmed the F1 Grand Prix is now a firm fixture on Singapore’s calendar. It attracted 200,000 international visitors in 2014 and generated 430 million viewers, on worldwide TV.
“Do we make money out of sports? It is not just about hosting or the 100 million a year in receipts at the F1… it goes beyond to exposure and publicity,” he explained.
“People know the F1 race, it helps to portray Singapore positively and being associated with such an exciting event is valuable… it’s a partnership that will last for quite a while.”
There are other events that have strong value such as hosting the World Tennis Association finals, an annual food festival (11 to 20 July), the monthly Pedestrian Night on Orchard road and the new Chinatown food-street that has free Wi-Fi to encourage social media posts and photos.
Despite having 57,000 rooms in the market, rates are high at an average SGD258 and occupancy averages 86% across the board, suggesting there is not much spare room capacity. Four new hotels are due to open in 2015 Patina, Genting, a property under the Park Group and South Beach
A new build pipeline has 10,000 rooms, with 4,000 due to come online, this year. Around 3,000 rooms were added in 2014.
“We are looking at new areas for hotels…we have to look, but it involves some hard choices,” said Chong.
Singapore celebrates its 50th anniversary and one of the projects to mark its birth is a heritage and arts showcase that will visit Beijing London and New York between April and November. The exhibition will be on display in Singapore in December.
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