Singapore Expects ‘Challenging Year’ for Tourism

By Simeon Bennett and Chen Shiyin

Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Singapore expects a “challenging year” for tourism in 2009 as the global economic recession curtails consumer spending and holiday plans.

Tourist arrivals fell 2 percent last year to 10.1 million visitors, even as receipts rose 5 percent to a record S$14.8 billion ($10 billion), the Singapore Tourism Board said in an e- mailed statement yesterday. Both figures missed the government’s targets of 10.8 million visitors and S$15.5 billion in receipts. Hotel occupancy rates slid 5.7 percentage points to 82 percent.

Singapore’s government is planning a marketing campaign aimed at other Asian nations, and is providing financial assistance to “help businesses ride out the slowdown,” it said. Still, arrivals may slump as much as 7.5 percent this year, David Cohen, director of Asian forecasting at Action Economics in Singapore, said today in a telephone interview.

“It will continue soft for at least a few more months,” Cohen said. “The hope is that the global situation would bottom out around the middle of the year on support from all the stimulus measures being implemented around the world.”

The decline in tourism spending will compound a recession in the export-dependent nation. Singapore’s economy may contract as much as 2 percent this year, after declining for three straight quarters, the trade ministry said Jan. 2.

Car Races, Casinos

A slump in visitor arrivals this year may hurt a bid to lure 17 million visitors to Singapore and triple tourism revenue to S$30 billion by 2015. The city-state last year staged its first Formula One race and is building two resorts that include casinos, and the only Universal Studios theme park in Southeast Asia.

“Given the continuing volatility of the global economic climate, we expect 2009 to be a challenging year,” the tourism board said in the statement. “Despite this, the mid to long-term potential for tourism, particularly in the Asian economies, remains bright.”

Global tourism will be “flat or marginal at best” this year, the World Tourism Organization said in October.

To contact the reporters on this story: Simeon Bennett in Singapore at sbennett9@bloomberg.net; Chen Shiyin in Singapore at schen37@bloomberg.net.