SINGAPORE, July 22 — With the resumption of international travel nowhere in sight due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) is urging local residents to rediscover Singapore in a bid to prop up the tourism sector.
Today, it launched a nine month-long domestic tourism campaign costing S$45 million (RM138 million)which is called SingapoRediscovers.
STB is working with various industry partners as well as community groups to offer a number of tour bundles for Singapore residents.
These bundles include staycations at hotels including those on Sentosa island, heartland tours to explore undiscovered areas of interest, as well as discounts to visit attractions.
Some confirmed events include the e-Great Singapore Sale from Sep 9, a virtually held Singapore Food Festival in August and culinary workshops at Little India and Chinatown.
In a media release, STB stated that this campaign to drive local demand is the largest ever introduced in Singapore.
The Step Out! Singapore campaign launched in 2003 after the city-state was hit by an outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) costs S$2 million.
In 2009, after the global financial campaign, STB launched a campaign costing $90 million, of which S$10 million was devoted to domestic tourism.
Speaking to the media during a preview of the launch on Tuesday, STB’s chief marketing officer Lynette Pang said that the S$45 million would be spent on three key areas: direct marketing of various attractions, retail and events; collaborating with industry partners for promotions; and marketing grants for industry partners.
STB’s chief executive Keith Tan, also speaking during the virtual briefing, said that the amount spent on domestic tourism this time has been “sized-up appropriately” because Covid-19 will be a long drawn-out affair.
“So we will have to be quite prudent on how we spend the S$45 million and how we use it over the next nine months,” he said.
More retrenchments expected
Tan said that the intention of this campaign is to help boost the revenue streams of local businesses as a complement to Government subsidies given out over the four Budgets this year to help businesses.
Given that Singaporeans spent S$34 billion in overseas travel in 2018, Mr Tan said he hopes this campaign will channel a “small portion” of that amount to local tourism.
When asked whether STB has a target it hopes to achieve through this campaign, he said that there is no target set as the Government agency has never tracked the amount Singaporeans spend domestically and there is therefore no baseline from which to set a target.
However, Tan said that this bid to drive domestic tourism would not be enough to plug the hole left behind by the absence of international travellers, who contributed S$27.7 billion in tourism receipts last year.
“We do not expect domestic consumption to fill the hole left by the diminution of national travel… What we’re hoping to do is to cushion impact so that there is no catastrophic job loss or massive retrenchments that would maybe destabilise not just the economy, destabilise Singaporeans’ sense of well being, sense of hope and confidence in the Singapore economy,” he said.
The tourism sector has been one of hardest hit by the Covid-19 outbreak as governments globally have closed borders to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Giving an update on how the tourism sector performed in the first quarter, Mr Tan said room revenues for the hotel industry declined 31 per cent compared to a year ago, while tourism receipts for shopping fell 52 per cent over the same period.
He added that STB expects further declines in the coming months leading to retrenchments and furloughs.
Last Wednesday, Resorts World Sentosa (RWS), which operates a casino, the Universal Studios Singapore theme park and hotels on Sentosa, said that it will be laying off workers due to the “devastating impact” the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the tourism industry, though it declined to reveal the number of retrenched staff.
Safe distancing measures still important
Despite encouraging locals to take up such tour packages, Mr Tan said commercial viability has to be balanced with safety so all businesses will have to adhere to capacity limits and put in place safe distancing measures.
Not all hotels are being allowed to reopen for staycations as there must be enough rooms set aside as stay-home notice facilities for those coming back from overseas, he noted.
Out of the more than 100 hotels that have applied to reopen, more than 80 have been approved to take staycation bookings.
Thien Kwee Eng, chief executive of Sentosa Development Corporation, said that about 80 per cent of attractions, hotels and food and beverage outlets on the island have reopened.
Close to half of the hotels designated as stay-home notice facilities will progressively reopen while the rest would have to depend on future arrangements, she added.
In response to a question by the media on the possibility of a second wave of Covid-19 infections and how this will affect STB’s plans, Tan said the agency would adhere to the advice and assessments by the Ministry of Health if that happens. — TODAY
