Singapore tourist arrivals dip from post-Covid record to 816,254 in November

SINGAPORE’S international visitor arrivals slipped in November to 816,254, slightly down from October’s 816,758 and breaking a nine-month growth streak, going by latest figures from Singapore Tourism Board (STB) on Tuesday (Dec 13).

November’s tourist arrival numbers remain below the 1.5 million visitors recorded in November 2019, before the pandemic.

But analysts agree that the slight fall was expected and reflective of historical trends.

“You are benchmarking against October with Formula 1 and all major Mice (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) activity in the city,” said Jesper Palmqvist, senior director for Asia-Pacific at hotel industry research firm STR.

“November was also a good month, considering where we’re coming from. In fact, the ability to replicate October so closely is quite the achievement.”

He added that November’s visitor arrivals have not once beaten October’s from 2015 to 2019.

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Gus McConnell, Asia-Pacific research manager at CBRE, also noted that global economic headwinds, lingering uncertainty over China and Hong Kong’s reopening and below-average available seat kilometres for airline passengers led to expectations of slowing growth.

Palmqvist added that “the main challenge on the radar is flight capacity” in terms of both seats and staffing, which leads to price volatility.

Analysts also agree that arrivals historically tend to spike in holiday-season December and should see growth then, though Palmqvist added that he estimates a smaller growth margin for the month compared to previous years.

Looking forward to 2023, McConnell and Wong Xian Yang, head of research at Cushman & Wakefield, expect China’s relaxation of Covid restrictions to boost travel recovery. Wong said that international visitor arrivals could surprise on the upside and exceed 12 million.

China, which was Singapore’s biggest inbound market from 2017 to 2019, sent just 16,023 visitors in November, though this was more than the preceding month when 14,971 visitors from there arrived in Singapore.

On next year’s outlook, Palmqvist added: “The booking window (the time between booking and arrival) for Singapore seems to have extended, which is good and a sign of market normalcy.”

Indonesia was, for the eighth straight month, the biggest source of arrivals, sending some 144,444 travellers in November, up from 133,408 recorded in the previous month.

India, Malaysia and Australia, which all saw falls in numbers of visitors sent, continued to hold the second, third and fourth spots, respectively. Hailing from India were 73,663 visitors, down from the previous month’s 81,774; Malaysia sent 72,300, down from 77,088; and 69,043 came from Australia, down from 73,718.

“Since numbers are still smaller compared to pre-Covid, it doesn’t take too many to create those shifts, so I wouldn’t read too much into that,” said Palmqvist. McConnell said that the decline in arrivals from source countries in November was a return to pre-Covid trends and “not an indicator of waning interest from the top feeder markets”.

In the year to date, Singapore has reported some 5.4 million international visitor arrivals, against STB’s expectation of four to six million international visitors for the year, announced in July.