India becomes S'pore third largest tourist market

Singapore, July 24: India has become Singapore's third largest tourist-visitor-generating market, growing by 15.1 per cent per year to 386,000 in January-June 2007.

The strong growth in arrivals from India was driven by a series of branding and promotional campaigns which generated strong destination awareness and interest, said the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) today.

India, Indonesia, China and Australia alone accounted for 44 per cent of the increase in overall 4.9 million visitor arrivals during the first half of the year, propelled by strong growth in their respective domestic economies.

Visitor arrivals from India, the Philippines and Vietnam have shown strong double digit growth over the previous year, said the STB.

Indonesia and China were Singapore's first two main tourist generating markets.

Based on the increasing first half-year tourist arrival numbers and the traditionally more visitor arrivals during the second half of the year, the STB is projecting 10.2 million visitor arrivals for this year, up from 9.7 million visitors in 2006 and 8.9 million in 2006.

UNI