It's just bad luck: Drop in Chinese visitor numbers is a fleeting glitch

Surely, the $10m effort should bear fruit.

Singapore Tourism Board must have been getting panicky with all the vanishing Chinese tourists, as it recently rolled out a whopping $10m marketing effort package to woo everyone back.

According to UOB Kayhian, visitor arrivals to Singapore declined 0.6% yoy for 4M14, the key reason being a 22% decline in Chinese visitors who are the second biggest visitor market for Singapore (accounting for 13% of total visitors).

Here's more from UOB Kayhian:

We believe the slowdown in Chinese visitor arrivals is temporary and expect Chinese visitor numbers to pick up with Singapore Tourism Board (STB) boosting its marketing efforts with a S$10m package to attract more Chinese tourists.

Overall, we expect a 5% yoy increase in visitor arrivals in 2014 to 16.3m after a better-than-expected 7.4% growth in 2013. Visitor arrival growth will continue to be driven by the five core visitor markets (Indonesia, China, Malaysia, Australia and India), which accounted for nearly 56% of total visitors in 2013.

Their recent visit to the much-awaited Singapore Sports Hub indicates that the S$2b world-class facility is nearly fully complete and is ready for opening in August.

The Sports Hub will feature a 55,000-seat National Stadium (NS) and 12,000-seat Singapore Indoor Stadium which should attract an array of sporting events, thereby bringing in additional avenues of visitor growth.

The Sports Hub will bring in a range of new events such as the World Club 10s Rugby, Women Tennis Championship, ASEAN Football Championship and SEA Games (2015).

Other attractions include concerts by Taiwanese star Jay Chou in November and One Direction in Mar’15. Assuming NS can host 12 events every year at full capacity with 50% of visitors being new overseas visitors, visitor arrivals could increase by 330,000, or additional 2% of overall visitors.

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