Singapore sees 7.1 million visitors in H1

Singapore Tourism Board (STB) announced Thurday that there were totally almost 7.1 million visitors arriving in the city-state during the first half of this year, an annual growth of 11.4 percent. Tourism spending during the period from January to June also saw an increase of 7 percent on year, reaching 11.5 billion Singapore dollars (9.43 billion U.S. dollars). Indonesia, China, India, Australia and Malaysia were the top five tourism receipts generating markets as well the top five sources of foreign tourists for the H1. Among them, there were about 978,000 Chinese visitors arriving at Singapore, spending around 1.21 billion Singapore dollars from January to June. The visitor arrivals from China registered an annual growth rate of 29 percent while the tourism receipts increased by 24 percent on year. "While average accommodation and food and beverage spend fell slightly due to shorter length of stay, shopping spend continued to grow," the board described the Chinese visitor's spending as saying. "China has also consistently been one of our top five markets that generated the highest tourism receipts. In terms of per capita expenditure, this was about 1,337 Singapore dollars in 2011, up from 467 Singapore dollars in 2002," Edward Chew, Chief Representative Regional Director of Greater China Region in STB said in an earlier interview with Xinhua. With the large influx in tourists, the city-state's hotel occupancy rate was at a high of 86 percent during H1. Average room rate during the same period was about 260 Singapore dollar per room per night, a growth of 9 percent on year.