During September Indonesia overtook mainland China as the top source market for Singapore’s monthly visitor arrivals, according to Singapore Tourism Board data. In that month, the city-state had 1.13-million visitor arrivals, down by 13.7 percent from the tally of 1.31 million in August.
The September result took Singapore’s visitor arrival tally for the first nine months of this year to 10.14 million, up 171.0 percent year-on-year. That represented circa 70.8 percent of the same period in the 2019 pre-pandemic trading year, when the city-state logged 14.33 million visitor arrivals.
In September this time, Indonesia supplied 175,600 visitors. Mainland China was second, with 135,680 visitors to the city-state.
Chinese tourists stayed longer on average than those from Singapore’s southern neighbour Indonesia, and longer than international visitors in general. The Chinese average was 4.60 days, versus Indonesians’ 2.89 days. September’s average stay for visitors drawn from across all international markets, was 3.65 days.
Mainland China was the largest single source of visitor arrivals to Singapore in the summer months of July and August, according to tourism board data.
In terms of recovery outlook, the aggregate number of visitor arrivals from the Chinese mainland for the January to September period stood at 1.01 million, only 35.4 percent of the same period in 2019, when the city-state logged 2.85 million arrivals from that market.
For the first nine months this year, the largest source markets for Singapore were: Indonesia (1.69 million), China (1.01 million), Malaysia (803,260), Australia (796,230), and India (792,910), according to the tourism board’s latest figures.
Singapore is home to a casino resort duopoly: Resorts World Sentosa, operated by Genting Singapore Ltd; and Marina Bay Sands, run by a unit of Las Vegas Sands Corp. The latter also controls Sands China Ltd, part of a six-operator setup in the Macau casino market.
