CORRECTED: China replaces Japan as Singapore's 2nd-biggest tourism source

Asian Economic News, Feb 2, 2004

SINGAPORE, Jan. 29 Kyodo

China replaced Japan as Singapore's second-biggest source of tourists last year, according to data released Thursday by the Singapore Tourism Board.

The data showed 568,389 people from mainland China visited Singapore last year, making it the second-biggest source of tourists after Indonesia.

Japan, which had retained the No. 2 position for the past several years, ranked fourth after being overtaken not only by China but also by Malaysia, the board said.

Visitor arrivals from Japan in 2003 plunged 40% from 2002 to 434,000 as the prolonged economic downturn in Japan, coupled with the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), curbed trips to Singapore.

Statistics for the past five years showed that the number of visitors from China surged by about 80% to a high of 670,000 in 2002 from about 373,000 in 1999, when China was only the sixth-biggest source of visitors to Singapore.

The SARS outbreak in East Asian countries, however, took its toll on visitor arrivals from China, with the number falling by 15% last year from 2002.

China's robust economy has sparked a travel boom, with more Chinese nationals traveling overseas with greater spending power than before. More Chinese tourists are now buying luxury items such as branded leather goods and jewelry on shopping trips to Singapore.

Singapore, with its predominantly Chinese-speaking population, is a magnet for Chinese tourists, who stop by for one or two days on tours of Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia and Thailand.

The Singapore government has eased immigration rules on Chinese tourists to woo them to visit the city state. In recent years, even some street names have taken on Chinese characters.

Overall visitor arrivals to Singapore in 2003 fell 19% to 6.1 million from 7.6 million in 2002 due largely to the SARS scare.

Singapore was one of the places hit hardest by SARS, along with China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Singapore was declared free of the disease by the World Health Organization at the end of May last year.

The epidemic compelled the tourism board to revise downward its target for visitor arrivals last year to 6 million.