Chart of the Day: See how Chinese tourism see-sawed to the negative in FY14

Down a painful 27%.

Chinese tourists continue to be the main drag in Singapore’s tourism sector, down 27% y-o-y, with the bright spot being Indonesia up 14% y-o-y.

As a result, July 2014 total tourist arrivals fell 1% y-o-y to 1.4m, taking 7M14 visitor arrivals to 8.9m (-2.5%).

According to DBS, while the numbers continue to be weak, the rate of deceleration has slowed as 6M14 total and Chinese arrivals were down -2.8% and -30% respectively.

DBS adds that going forward, we expect arrivals to remain soft, albeit on an improving trend. 4Q14 may see arrivals bottoming out, mainly due to the low-base effect. 3Q13 total and China visitors were down 0.3% and 31% respectively, following the imposition of new Chinese tourism laws in Oct13.

Here’s more from DBS:

There was an improvement in the overall hospitality sector with 7M14 RevPAR now flat y-
o-y, compared to -0.3% for 6M14. This was driven by a 2% y-o-y increase in Jul’14 RevPAR to S$223 (the first positive y-o-y growth in two months) as occupancy rose to 90% (+1.5 ppts) and ADR increased slightly (+0.5%) to S$248. Segment-wise, luxury RevPAR was up 11.2% to S$402 while mid-tier continues to struggle, down 3.5% to S$162. For the rest of 2H14, we expect a gradual improvement in y-o-y RevPAR as the slowdown in tourist arrivals abates.