Singapore tourist arrivals surpass one million in March; first time since 2020

SINGAPORE’S international visitor arrivals surpassed one million in March, for the first time since the pandemic began in 2020, the latest figures from the Singapore Tourism Board showed on Thursday (Apr 20).

Tourism arrivals rose to 1,021,036 in March, up from 957,839 visitors recorded in the previous month. While March’s arrival numbers set a new post-pandemic record, it is still below the 1.7 million visitors recorded in January 2020, before the pandemic.

Nevertheless, the continued recovery in visitor arrivals is encouraging, said Maybank economist Lee Ju Ye, noting that tourism arrivals from many major source countries to Singapore have already exceeded 70 per cent of pre-pandemic levels as of March.

In particular, the Republic saw a significant jump in Chinese tourist arrivals from the previous month. The country crept up five places to come in fifth in March, with 60,888 visitors – up from 35,312 visitors a month prior.

This growth was boosted by the resumption of outbound group tours from Feb 6, noted Lee, who added that Singapore was also among the countries seeing the fastest return of China tourists, at 20 per cent of pre-pandemic levels in March.

“The normalisation of flight capacity between Singapore and China in the coming months will further boost arrivals from China,” she said.

March’s figures were also “well within” DBS analyst Geraldine Wong’s expectations of a comeback in Chinese travellers, and she said the return of Chinese tourists could potentially be in full swing in the fourth quarter of this year.

Once Singapore’s largest inbound market before the pandemic, the return of Chinese travellers will be the “next boost for travel-related sectors in 2023”, wrote Wong and DBS analysts Tabitha Foo and Derek Tan in a research note.

“Forward-leading indicators show that Chinese travel demand recovery will be fast, wide, and furious, albeit from a low recovery base,” they added.

As Chinese visitor arrival numbers rebound and international flight capacity ramps up, Singapore may see monthly visitor arrivals consistently cross the million mark for the rest of the year, said Wong Xian Yang, head of research at Cushman & Wakefield. Even so, he is not anticipating a “sharp recovery” back to pre-Covid levels.

Among the other top source countries in March was Indonesia, which came in first place for the 12th straight month, recording 171,507 visitors in March – higher than the 156,448 visitors in the previous month.

The next-largest source country was Malaysia, with 97,835 tourist arrivals. This was an increase from 88,040 in February.

Coming in third place was India, overtaking Australia with 75,338 visitors. This was more than the 61,293 visitors in the previous month.