Singapore visitor arrivals 17.3% up on casino boost

Hotel occupancy rose 14 percentage points from a year ago to 87.1%, with average room rates rising 3.3% in March to us$ 149, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) said yesterday. The number of “visitor days” the overall visitor arrivals times an average length of stay for each visitor grew 16.4% in March from a year earlier to 3.5 million days.

Singapore is banking on its two casinos to boost tourists. The us$ 4.7 billion Resort World on Sentosa, owned by Malaysia’s Genting Group, opened its doors to visitors in February, and the us$ 5.5 billion Las Vegas Sands owned Marina Bay Sands casino resort opened yesterday. Visitor arrivals to Singapore may rise by as much as 30% this year, helped by an economic recovery in Asia and by the two casinos, STB said in March.

Each casino is expected to contribute a value add of us$1.92 billion, or 0.5% to 1%, to Singapore’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2015, STB estimates.

Singapore is trying to diversify into services industries such as tourism to reduce dependence on manufacturing. But it suffered a fall in tourism as well as exports in 2009 during the financial crisis.

The number of visitors to Singapore fell by 4.3% last year to 9.7 million, driving revenue from the sector down 19%.