Nov 26, 2008

Business - India;Singapore targets Indian tourists in tier-II cities

JAIPUR: Singapore Tourism Board (STB) plans to target tier-II cities, including Jaipur, Chandigarh and Jalandhar, to bolster the growth of tourist arrivals in the city-state.

Besides pitching aggressively in primary markets like Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Pune and Bangalore the STB is planning to comb the market potential of tier-II cities like Jaipur, Chandigarh, Mohali, Jalandhar and Lucknow, said Kenneth Lim, STB's Area Director for Northern and eastern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.

"India is the third largest inbound market for visitor arrivals to Singapore contributing 8 per cent of the total visitor arrivals. We aim to take this figure to double digit. However, the rate of growth in Indian visitors to Singapore has been consistently around 14 per cent year on year," he said.

There were 8,16,000 visitors during June 2008, a decline of 4.1 per cent relative to the same month last year. In the first half of 2008, total tourism receipts by global visitors
to Singapore were S$6.5 billion recording a 0.2 per cent decrease over January to June 2007.

This accounts for 42 per cent of the S$15.5 billion tourism receipts set for this fiscal.


Figures released by STB showed that Indonesia (1,67,000), China (1,05,000), Australia (80,000), India (63,000) and Japan (47,000) were the top five visitor-generating markets, which accounted for half of the total visitor arrivals for July.

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