Singapore total arrivals continue to show new records while Europe turns now into the weak element of the city’s tourism.
SINGAPORE – Singapore received 7.61 million international travelers during the first six months of 2013, a growth of 7.5% over the same period of 2012, according to preliminary figures from Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA). Each month since the beginning of the year has seen over 1.2 million travelers arriving to the City-State.
Unfortunately – and in a very surprising way for a city which claims to be so efficient- data per nationality or country of residence are still not available beside January and February. Referring only to the first two months of 2013, the fastest growing markets to Singapore were Northeast Asia (+18%), the Pacific (+16.4%) and South Asia (+10.7%). Taiwan but also China PRC, Australia and India are among the top incoming markets with the fastest growth in total arrivals. Their growth rate is generally over 10% with Taiwan even showing a progress of 31%.
Rather disappointing were however the performances from Southeast Asia as well as from the Middle-East and Europe. While Southeast Asian total arrivals still recorded a modest growth of 0.8% compared to the same period of 2012, both the Middle East and Europe show a decline of respectively 2.4% and 3.3%. With slightly less than 300,000 arrivals in January and February, Europe incoming markets continue to suffer from weak economic growth. Arrivals from Germany were for example down by 15.7%, Belgium was down by 8.8% . Even Russia recorded a negative evolution of its arrivals, down by 3.4%.
Luc Citrinot a French national is a freelance journalist and consultant in tourism and air transport with over 20 years experience. Based in Paris and Bangkok, he works for various travel and air transport trade publications in Europe and Asia.
