Missing China tourists leave conspicuous hole as Singapore nears peak travel season

THE absence of travellers from mainland China is being felt by Singapore, even as the country prepares to welcome more visitors in the year-end peak travel season.

Data from global air travel analytics company ForwardKeys shows air ticket bookings, made as at Jun 21, for travel into Singapore in November and December, are 76 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.

Outbound air ticket bookings are, in contrast, 141 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.

Singapore and its neighbouring countries dropped or relaxed their pandemic-induced border controls for vaccinated travellers earlier this year, and higher passenger traffic is expected towards the end of the year — when many schools break for holidays.

Changi Airport has said it will reopen Terminal 4 in September and the south wing of Terminal 2 in October, ahead of the northern winter season that begins on Oct 30.

ForwardKeys data shows the top 5 source markets for Singapore in November and December are, in descending order: Australia (110 per cent of pre-pandemic levels), United Kingdom (82 per cent), the United States (97 per cent), Indonesia (42 per cent), and Germany (57 per cent).

The overall inbound air ticket booking numbers, however, are lagging because of the lack of Chinese tourists.

Singapore Tourism Board data showed that mainland China, with its over half a million visitors, was the city-state's top second source market for November and December before the pandemic hit. Indonesia topped with 606,280 visitors.

Kee Bing Han, vice-president of sales for Asia-Pacific at ForwardKeys, said that intra-Asia-Pacific travel has been relatively muted. "For inbound traffic, we see that mostly the long-haul source markets have started travelling to Apac again, hence why we see that 4 out of the 5 top source markets are not from the region."

The top 5 destinations outbound from Singapore, based on bookings for travel in November or December, had mostly recovered to or exceeded pre-pandemic levels. In descending volume, they are: Australia (232 per cent of pre-pandemic), Thailand (409 per cent), Japan (47 per cent), South Korea (108 per cent), and the Philippines (data unavailable).

Kee said: "The top destinations for Singaporeans are closer to home, though I’d say that the long-haul destinations provide more security. Europe and the US got rid of travel restrictions quite quickly and, even with Omicron, they didn’t implement new ones. I suppose that gives some kind of security when you are looking to travel."

Japan opened to tourists on tour groups from 98 countries only from Jun 10. Singaporeans may still be waiting for further developments before making bookings.

Overall bookings might still improve, ForwardKeys added, as most bookings are made close to the travel date.

Meanwhile, airlines are ramping up their capacity to capitalise on revenge travelling and year-end holidaymakers.

Aviation data provider Cirium’s information shows Changi Airport has over 66,000 scheduled flights with nearly 16 million seats for the fourth quarter. That is more than double the 25,000 with over 6 million seats in the first quarter, before Singapore and South-east Asia meaningfully reopened their borders.

In particular, Singapore Airlines (SIA) group’s scheduled flights and available seats, including low-cost carrier Scoot’s, for the fourth quarter are double its first quarter’s. But the group’s capacity is still less than the corresponding quarter before the pandemic hit, by about 20 per cent.