Cruise business up 14% in Singapore last year

The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) reports that the country witnessed encouraged growth in the cruise and business segments as the Singapore Cruise Centre (SCC) was named the number one cruise port in Asia in 2015.

Interestingly, the cruise industry saw a 14% year-on-year increase in cruise passenger throughput last year to more than one million.

In addition, the country welcomed a total of 385 cruise ships, including international cruise brands such as TUI cruises, and Royal Caribbean, as well as nine maiden calls – new to Singapore and Southeast Asia.

GROWING CRUISE INCENTIVES…

The STB added that Singapore also launched the inaugural unified Southeast Asia Cruise brand​ and forged MOUs with Vietnam and Thailand to develop the regional cruise business. ​

The tourism body also manages the Cruise Development Fund (CDF) which actively supports the ‘home-porting’ of new cruise ships or extension in deployments of existing home-ported cruise ships out of Singapore, with the aim of growing Singapore’s cruise industry and tourism generally.

Significantly, the Royal Caribbean International cruise company signed its first-ever multi-million dollar marketing collaboration with STB and the Changi Airport Group (CAG) last year to promote overseas fly-cruising out of Singapore.

This tripartite agreement now operates between 2015 and 2018 and all parties are estimating it could attract an additional 170,000 overseas visitors to Singapore on Royal Caribbean cruises over this aforementioned period.

DFS AND HEINEMANN

All of which is good news for DFS Singapore, which operates the departure-transit and arrivals transit shops alongside Ocean Duty Free’s outlets at the Singapore Cruise Centre.

Heinemann Asia Pacific opened its third and largest duty free shop (157sq m) in partnership with the Singapore Cruise Centre (SCC) at the Harbourfront Ferry Terminal last January. Around 5m passengers use this terminal each year-Ed.

As reported, the STB is now forecasting that this year’s total tourism receipts will be between S$22bn and $22.4bn ($16bn to $16.3bn) representing a growth range between 0% and 2%. By contrast, it is forecasting international visitor arrivals of between 15.2m and 15.7m – a growth of between 0% to 3%. ​

This follows a year when international visitor arrivals grew by 0.9% to 15.2m in 2015. However, tourism receipts declined by -6.8% to S$22bn ($16bn) with this attributed mainly to the decline in BTMICE visitor arrivals and spending. By contrast, leisure visitor arrivals grew by 2%.