Singapore expects full tourism recovery by 2024

Singapore's international arrivals beat forecasts in 2022, paving the way for its tourism sector to recover to pre-pandemic levels by 2024, its tourism authority said on Tuesday. The city-state saw 6.3m visitors last year, exceeding the Singapore Tourism Board's (STB) forecast of between 4 to 6m, while revenue from their spending was estimated to reach S$13.8b to S$14.3b ($10.45-10.82b). STB's Director of Communications Terence Voon said these numbers were achieved even though Singapore had quarantine measures in the first quarter of 2022, reflecting that there is "strong pent-up demand" to visit Singapore. But factors such as flight capacity and any renewed border restrictions could moderate tourism recovery, said STB's CE, Keith Tan. Tourism contributes about 4% to Singapore's annual gross domestic product, according to the STB. In 2019, the regional travel hub saw a record 19.1m visitors and S$27.7b in revenue. Following the announcement of reopening of Chinese borders, the Southeast Asian country is expecting 12 to 14m arrivals and up to S$21b in revenue in 2023. There were 3.6m visitors from China in 2019, making it the largest contributor to Singapore's tourism before the pandemic. But while it had strict travel restrictions in place, China was overtaken by Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Australia and the Philippines.<br/>