TBM Staff - Mumbai Expecting over 1.5 million Indian tourists this year, Singapore is focusing on increasing its hospitality infrastructure such as hotel rooms, and working on seamless and easy visas for them, a senior tourism official said on Wednesday.
Before the pandemic-induced lockdown, Singapore had received 1.4 million tourists from India in 2019, which then recovered to 1.1 million in 2023.
In 2024, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) expects the number to go past the 2019 strength even as it acknowledged the potential of getting over 1.5 million visitors though it has not set any target given “the huge tourism potential of the Indian market.”
With three offices in Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai, the STB is working on getting seamless and easy visas for Indian tourists, Poh Chi Chuan, Executive Director of Exhibition & Conference at the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) told PTI.
The island state is building infrastructure for tourists and business travellers, such as 9,000 new hotel rooms that are being added to about 72,000 existing rooms.
“We need visitors to come and fill these rooms,” Poh underlined and hoped “The flights between India and Singapore get back to the pre-pandemic level.”
Singapore is just not looking at the tourist traffic out of India but also business travellers given that both countries have growing trade and a prospering Indian economy, he said.
“We also see a lot of opportunities coming up in India in sectors such as pharma, BioMed, IT and FinTech. These are very strong industries for Singapore to increase bilateral trade,” said Poh, adding that Singapore has large-scale exhibitions and conferences catering to these sectors covering advanced technologies. (Source: PTI)
