In February, the news reported that some 1.24 million Chinese visitors had visited Singapore in the first half of last year, a hefty 27 per cent rise from the same period the previous year.
The Chinese also emerged as the biggest spenders, overtaking Indonesian visitors.
"Singapore Tourism Board (STB) figures show that Chinese visitors spent almost $1.52 billion in the first half of last year, 3 per cent more than Indonesians. This excludes what they spent on sightseeing and entertainment."
But since then, regional unrests in Thailand and the recent flight MH17 plane crash have dented travels to Singapore.
This in turn prompted the Singapore authorities to launch a revamp of its "Rediscover Singapore From Your Heart campaign" at a cost of S$1 million for S$1 million "to attract more Chinese tourists after seeing a decline in Chinese arrivals in the past four months", the news reported in June this year.
However, the campaign does not seem to have borne any fruits yet.
According to a Bloomberg report on 4 August 2014, reduction in visitors from Asia’s largest economy contributed to a sales slide of as much as 4 percent in Singapore’s annual shopping festival, the Great Singapore Sale, according to the retailers’ association.
Visitors from China to Singapore dropped 27 percent in the five months through May from a year earlier amid slower economic growth on the mainland and the impact of a new Chinese law that clamped down on cut-price shopping tours. Total tourist arrivals slid 1.7 percent, according to the Singapore Tourism Board.
Singapore’s retailers, already facing growing regional competition, are under the most pressure since the Asian financial crisis, Singapore Retailers Association Honorary Treasurer Kesri Singh Kapur said.
“It is that grim,” Kapur, 47, said in a July 29 interview in Singapore. “Both the sides of consumption, which are the domestic customers and tourists, are not spending. I anticipate that at least for the next 12 months, the market will be sluggish.”
Even shops in Singapore's main shopping belt, Orchard Road, are being hit.
Retail brands have expanded into other markets in China, Indonesia, and Malaysia, making Singapore a less unique shopping destination, said Kapur.
“Singapore had this aura and advantage of being slightly different from its neighbors” five or 10 years back, he said. “Yes we have a great Orchard Road, we have a great environment where people can walk and shop, but availability of brands has come at parity now.”
“It all adds up to a fairly bearish picture for the retail sector,” said Selena Ling, an economist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. in Singapore. “It’s hard to see immediate light at the end of the tunnel.”
Has Singapore become too dependent on tourists from China?
*Article first appeared on http://publicopinion.sg/69/has-spore-become-too-dependent-on-china-tourists