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Dayne Lim Singapore: An Asian tourism hub

Mr. Dayne Lim, Coordinating Regional Director for International Group at the Singapore Tourism Board, analyzes in TravelDailyNews the new orientation of Singapore’s tourism policy

TravelDailyNews:What are your plans regarding the mice industry development in your country?

Dayne Lim: We have put a ten years target for that field and we are very optimistic about it. We are creating convention facilities and the percentage of business travelers in our country is 26% of Singapore’s 8.3 million tourist arrivals in 2004. Our target is to reach 35% by 2015 and we have come up to two strategies in order to make this true. One is to attract new investments in Singapore and the second is to create twelve clusters in many fields in order to attract more incentives and conferences in our country. Our primary target is to make Singapore a Business – Financial Hub and we are trying to support Singapore’s btmice industry by redeveloping Marina Bay to a Garden City By The Bay, with a strong mice cluster of convention and exhibition spaces.

TDN:How are you going to increase the tourist flow in your country?

D.L.: We have set a target of visits and until now we‘ve managed to attract 1,125,000 Europeans in Singapore. Overall tourism receipts are planned to reach S$30 billion, with visitor arrivals to 17 million. A new whole series of new developments especially in the leisure sector will take place in 2006. We want to maintain Europe as the third largest source market for the Singapore tourism sector in 2006 after ASEAN and China. Europe is a very important market for us and particular for our long term tourism growth. We will launch two new resorts in Marina Bay in 2009 – 2010 and Marina Bay will include many attractions and infrastructure projects such as the Singapore Flyer and the Spaceport.

TDN:World Tourism Organization is giving special attention to sustainable tourism and poverty alleviation. What is your policy on that?

D.L.: We support efforts that help tourism industry to become stronger especially when these efforts derive from organizations such as the World Tourism Organization. Singapore Tourism Board coordinates strategic approach to planning. We proceed to urban redevelopment and that means to completely transform major cities to green cities. On the other hand, poverty alleviation is not really an issue for Singapore but we support and give our help in other countries.

TDN:How did Tsunami affected Singapore’s tourist flow?

D.L.: Tsunami had a slight effect in our country because we didn’t affect as badly as the other countries of the region. Actually, we provided our assistance and our aid to the other countries of the region. But I have to say that we had conducted a communications plan particular to that situation that helped to limit the impact of the tsunami and to recover faster.

TDN:Singapore Airlines want to enter more dynamic to the Australian market but Qantas resists. How do you comment this?

D.L.: Our policy is to work with every airline company especially when there are mutual interests. We have a good cooperation with Qantas and the company carries many Australians to Singapore. I believe that Singapore Airlines has already a good network in Australia and it will continue to offer more routes in the future.

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TravelDailyNews Asia-Pacific editorial team has an experience of over 35 years in B2B travel journalism as well as in tourism & hospitality marketing and communications.

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