Cruising along
SINGAPORE registered record high growth in tourism last year thanks in part to a large number of Malaysians who are taking cruises from the island republic.
With the increasing demand of cruise holidays and packages, Malaysian cruise arrivals (+29%) have added strong growth numbers to last year’s visitor arrivals.
In 2017, tourism receipts from Malaysia to Singapore increased by 11% to S$608mil (RM1,793.78mil), with expenditure on shopping being the key contributing factor.
The total visitor arrivals from Malaysia rose by 1.5% and was largely contributed by an increase in visitors from Penang (+9.6%), Ipoh (+4.7%) and visitors from East Malaysia (+2.7%).
Overall, tourism receipts rose by 3.9% to S$26.8bil (RM79.21bil) while tourist arrivals increased by 6.2% to 17.4 million.
Singapore Tourism Board (STB) area director (Malaysia and Brunei) Dawn Ng said the strong positive growth comes amid a “challenging year for the Malaysian market”.
“With added cruise liners homeporting out of Singapore in 2018, we will continue to drive cruise travels with cruise partners such as Royal Caribbean, Genting Dream and Costa Victoria,” she said.
Ng added that travel operators should capitalise on the rising cruise trend by curating attractive packages with a land itinerary before or after cruising.
For 2018, STB forecasts tourism receipts to be in the range of S$27.1bil (RM80.09bil) to S$27.6 billion (RM81.57bil) and international visitor arrivals to be in the range of 17.6 to 18.1 million. – Chester Chin