GGRAsia – Singapore 2024 visitor arrivals to top prior 15mln estimate

Singapore 2024 visitor arrivals to top prior 15mln estimate

Dec 26, 2024 Newsdesk Latest News, Singapore, Top of the deck

Singapore logged 15.13 million visitor arrivals this calendar year up to November 30, meaning the city-state has already surpassed the lower range of an earlier estimate for the entire year, previously issued by the Singapore Tourism Board (STB).

Singapore is home to a casino duopoly shared between Marina Bay Sands, controlled by United States-based Las Vegas Sands Corp; and Resorts World Sentosa, run by Genting Singapore Ltd.

The city-state had 1.23 million visitor arrivals in November, up by 12.2 percent year-on-year. The November tally took Singapore’s inbound visitor volume for the first 11 months of this year, to 15.13 million, which represented 22.3 percent year-on-year growth.

The lower end of previous tourism board projections had been 15 million for full-year 2024, and the upper end had been 16.5 million.

The STB had estimated 2024 visitors would generate between SGD27.5 billion (US$20.3 billion) and SGD29 billion in tourist spending.

For November, STB data logged 909,510 overnight visitors, representing around 73.9 percent of Singapore’s 1.23 million visitor arrivals for that month. The average November length of stay was 3.54 days, a rise of 3.5 percent year-on-year.

Indonesia overtook China as Singapore’s leading source of visitors in November. During that month, the city-state recorded 194,440 Indonesian arrivals. The other two prominent feeder markets were China (174,750) and Malaysia (101,920).

Across the January to November period, China has been Singapore’s top source for inbound tourists. In that time frame, the city-state received 2.89 million Chinese visitors. That was an 86.27 percent recovery on the same period in 2019, i.e., prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, when Singapore received 3.35 million Chinese visitors.

Across the first 11 months, Indonesia was Singapore’s second-most important feeder market, supplying 2.22 million visitors to the city-state. The tally represented an 80.14 percent recovery versus the same period in 2019, when Singapore received 2.77 million Indonesian visitors.