For Singapore, India continues to be a strong ‘source-market’ for tourism

With and an inflow of more than one million Indian tourists into Singapore for the fifth consecutive year, India continues to be one of the key source markets for its tourism sector. The Singapore Tourism Board is pulling out all stops to woo India’s vast majority of millennial travellers and adventure seekers.

“2019 was generally a good year for Singapore Tourism. India continues to be the third largest source of visitor arrivals after China and Indonesia,” said GB Srithar, Regional Director, India, Middle East and South Asia, STB in a press conference held here on Monday. While it received 1.44 million Indian visitors in 2018, in 2019 the country received about 1.19 million Indian visitors as of October itself. “India is also the number one cruise source market for Singapore. Lot of Indian travellers come to Singapore for cruising and enjoy some of the leading cruise products Royal Caribbean, Genting Dream and Costa Cruises,” Srithar added.

He added that India is also a crucial market for Singapore in terms of Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) tourism.

Noting that Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi and Bengaluru offer the highest number of tourists from India, Srithar said, visitors from Tier-2 cities like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore and Tiruchi are also on the rise. “From Tamil Nadu, we have got four direct connecting points — Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai and Tiruchi — to Singapore, and across South India, nine cities are directly connected,” he said.

“With the emergence of more and more new cities and improvement in domestic flight connectivity, India’s potential to contribute to global tourism is more than that of any other country,” Srithar said.

He was in the city to kickstart STB’s travel trade outreach programme for 2020. The trade engagement roadshow is aimed at deepening STB and tourism stakeholders, existing partnerships and foster new ones with the local travel trade fraternity. Titled, ‘Growing Connections, Achieving Together’, the trade engagement roadshow will be part of South Asia’s largest travel and tourism exhibition SATTE 2020 to be held at Noida on January 8-10.