Malaysians spent less in Singapore last year

Singapore registered 26 percent less in tourism receipts from Malaysia last year as against 2014, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) said today.

In a statement, STB said besides Malaysia, the decline in tourism receipts was keenly felt in Indonesia (21 percent) and Australia (10 percent).

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 percent against the Singapore dollar in the past three years.

Based on preliminary estimates, STB said that the overall tourism receipts declined 6.8 percent to S$22.0 billion (S$1=RM3.00) last year.

The top growth-markets for 2015 tourism receipts were Japan (6.0 percent) and United Kingdom (4.0 percent).

As for international visitor arrivals, the largest declines were posted by Indonesia (10 percent), Malaysia (5.0 percent), Japan (4.0 percent) and Australia (3.0 percent) 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 percent), India (7.0 percent), South Korea (7.0 percent) and Taiwan (12 percent).

Nonetheless, Singapore's overall visitor arrivals grew 0.9 percent 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.