An overview of Singapore (Photo: Internet)The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) on January 17 estimated that visitor arrivals in the city state will recover to the pre-pandemic level in 2024.
Singapore welcomed 6.3 million foreign visitors last year, or one-third of the pre-pandemic level, mostly from Indonesia, India and Malaysia. It beat the STB’s previous forecast of 4-6 million. The 2022 tourism revenue was estimated at 13.8-14.3 billion SGD (10.45-10.82 billion USD).
Visitor arrivals are expected to increase to 12-14 million this year, bringing in 18-21 billion SGD from tourism spending.
STB Chief Executive Officer Keith Tan said this year, the board is hoping to get between 30-60% of visitor arrivals compared to the figure in 2019.
According to the STB, tourism contributes to about 4% of Singapore’s annual GDP. In 2019, the island state hosted a record of 19.1 million visitors and earned 27.7 billion SGD from their receipts. Up to 3.6 million of them were Chinese, the biggest source of arrivals./.