Malaysians Spent Less In Singapore Last Year

By Massita Ahmad SINGAPORE, Feb 29 (Bernama) -- Singapore registered 26 per cent less, tourism receipts from Malaysia last year as against 2014, says the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) Monday. In a statement, STB said besides Malaysia, the decline in tourism receipts was keenly felt in Indonesia (21 per cent) and Australia (10 per cent). These markets faced economic challenges and saw their currencies depreciate against the Singapore dollar. Consequently, there were fewer visitor arrivals and less spending from these markets, the board said. As for the Ringgit alone, it dropped almost 25 per cent against the Singapore dollar in the past three years. Based on preliminary estimates, STB said that the overall tourism receipts declined 6.8 per cent to S$22.0 billion (S$1=US$0.70) last year. The top growth-markets for 2015 tourism receipts were Japan (6.0 per cent) and United Kingdom (4.0 per cent). As for international visitor arrivals, the largest declines were posted by Indonesia (10 per cent), Malaysia (5.0 per cent), Japan (4.0 per cent) and Australia (3.0 per cent) markets. STB said the macroeconomic factors including currency depreciation and an uncertain economic outlook had dampened outbound travel sentiment. The top growth-markets for 2015 visitor arrivals were China (22 per cent), India (7.0 per cent), South Korea (7.0 per cent) and Taiwan (12 per cent). Nonetheless, Singapore's overall visitor arrivals grew 0.9 per cent to 15.2 million last year. STB said that the mixed performance -- tourism receipts and arrivals -- came on the back of various headwinds such as an uncertain global economic outlook and weak currencies in some of Singapore's top source markets in 2015. -- BERNAMA