Singapore expects a "challenging year" for tourism in 2009 as the global economic recession curtails consumer spending and holiday plans, Bloomberg reported.
Tourist arrivals fell 2 percent last year to 10.1 million visitors, even as receipts rose 5 percent to a record S$14.8 billion ($10 billion), the Singapore Tourism Board said in an e- mailed statement yesterday. Both figures missed the government's targets of 10.8 million visitors and S$15.5 billion in receipts. Hotel occupancy rates slid 5.7 percentage points to 82 percent.
Singapore's government is planning a marketing campaign aimed at other Asian nations, and is providing financial assistance to "help businesses ride out the slowdown," it said. Still, arrivals may slump as much as 7.5 percent this year, David Cohen, director of Asian forecasting at Action Economics in Singapore, said today in a telephone interview.
"It will continue soft for at least a few more months," Cohen said. "The hope is that the global situation would bottom out around the middle of the year on support from all the stimulus measures being implemented around the world."
The decline in tourism spending will compound a recession in the export-dependent nation. Singapore's economy may contract as much as 2 percent this year, after declining for three straight quarters, the trade ministry said Jan. 2.