SINGAPORE’S international visitors jumped to a post-Covid high of 1,436,404 in January on a surge in China arrivals.

Singapore Tourism Board (STB) figures on Wednesday (Feb 21) showed visitors from China swelled over 60 per cent in January to 211,194, from 130,207 a month earlier – even before a mutual 30-day visa exemption was set to take effect in February.

While it was a large contributor to the month-on-month increase, China was still behind Indonesia in terms of absolute number of visitors by source country. Singapore’s Asean neighbour took top spot with 268,972 tourists last month, climbing from 244,343 in December.

Overall, visitor arrivals to the Republic were up 15.9 per cent from the preceding month’s 1,239,776. The January figure was also a 54.2 per cent surge from the year-ago period.

In third place was Australia as the source of 124,144 tourists, up from 112,310 in the month before.

Malaysia was in fourth place with 93,387 visitors, slipping from 102,689 in December.

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Rounding out the top five was India, which was the source of 82,117 visitors in January, higher than 92,635 in the preceding month.

STB said earlier in its year in review that Singapore is expected to have 15 million to 16 million international visitors in 2024, supported by improved global flight connectivity and capacity as well as the Singapore-China visa exemption.