S"pore sees more than 12.9m foreign visitors in first 10 months of 2013

According to the Singapore Tourism Board, there were more than 12.9 million international visitor arrivals in the first 10 months of 2013. That is an 8.4 per cent increase compared to the same period in 2012.

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Tourists gather in front of the iconic statue of the Merlion in Singapore. (AFP/Roslan Rahman)

SINGAPORE: According to the Singapore Tourism Board, there were more than 12.9 million international visitor arrivals in the first 10 months of 2013.

That is an 8.4 per cent increase compared to the same period in 2012.

And while the Sing dollar remained strong in 2013, some tourist attractions in Singapore said this has not deterred visitors.

Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) said in the first three quarters of 2013, it had about 18,000 visitors each day.

It added one of the main contributing factors to these strong numbers was the opening of the new Marine Life Park in November 2012, which has attracted more than 3 million visitors as of October 2013.

The top five countries which saw visitors to RWS were Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Thailand and China.

Clement Ng, senior executive for communications at RWS, said: “Of course we are still continuing with our marketing strategies in all our cities and key markets, therefore we believe that is taking effect and we have more international tourists coming in.

“At the same time there are markets – for example, China – which are seeing a stronger currency actually, so we are still getting a lot of visitors from those markets and we see greater potential in their growth as well.”

But some jewellery shops Channel NewsAsia spoke to said the strong Singapore currency has affected business.

The Indian rupee fell about eight per cent in 2013 against the Sing dollar compared to 2012.

Coupled with new duty fees imposed on those bringing gold into India, a shop in Little India said takings from Indian tourists buying gold has fallen by more than 40 per cent.

- CNA/gn

S"pore sees more than 12.9m foreign visitors in first 10 months of 2013