The strong tourism recovery last year is expected to continue, with both international visitor arrivals and tourism receipts to climb further this year, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) said on Thursday.
Visitor arrivals are forecast to hit 15 million to 16 million, bringing in approximately $26 billion to $27.5 billion in tourism receipts this year.
This builds on last year’s numbers, when the Republic had 13.6 million visitors and tourism receipts estimated between $24.5 billion and $26 billion.
This means tourist spending will almost hit the pre-pandemic high of $27.7 billion in 2019, but expected visitor numbers will still be shy of the 19.1 million arrivals recorded that year, before Covid-19 brought air travel to a standstill.
STB noted that visitor arrivals last year came within the forecast set out at the start of the year for 12 million to 14 million arrivals, but that tourism receipts surpassed the expected $18 billion to $21 billion.
Visitor arrivals last year were buoyed by Indonesia, China, and Malaysia – the top three markets with 2.3 million, 1.4 million and 1.1 million visitors respectively.
Other key markets that posted buoyant recovery included Australia, South Korea and the United States.
China topped the chart in tourist spending with $2.3 billion, followed by Indonesia ($2.2 billion) and Australia ($1.5 billion). Indonesia had topped the list in 2022, contributing $1.1 billion then.
The Straits Times
