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Singapore is one of the top ten most visited cities in 2016

Annette Rowena
Updated

Last year, travellers populated the cities of London, Paris, Dubai and New York. Nothing new there. Those cities have attracted throngs of visitors over the years. But last year, Asia proved to be catching up in numbers. One city in particular, Bangkok, received the most number of international overnight visitors (IOV) at 21.47 mil.


Source: Mastercard Global Destination Cities Index Report

Data from Mastercard’s Global Destination Cities Index (GDCI) also show that Singapore is not far behind, standing at #6 on the list with 12.11 mil IOVs. 

Five cities were also cited as Asia Pacific’s fastest growing destination cities from 2009 to 2016– Osaka, Chengdu, Colombo, Tokyo and Taipei. Osaka had the highest compound annual growth rate of 24.2%, while the rest of the cities followed at 20.1% (Chengdu), 19.6% (Colombo), 18.5% (Tokyo) and 14.5% (Taipei).

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Understanding Singapore’s Rank

The 5 biggest feeder cities for Singapore were from the APAC region entirely – Manila, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo and Jakarta. A mere 13% of international visitors here came beyond this region. As far as countries of origin are concerned, 16% of Singapore’s international visitors come from Indonesia, followed by 14% from China, India and Australia at 7% each and finally 6% from Malaysia.

As far as purpose of visits are concerned, 22.7% of the visitors to Singapore came over for business needs, while 77.3% were for leisure or others. The expenditure breakdown was 12.3% for food and beverage, 22.5% for shopping, 4.5% for local transportation and 31.8% for local services.

Visitors into the country peaked in the months July, August and December. The Overall International Visitor Spend for Singapore stood at US$12.54 bil, which is a 1.7% increase compared to 2015 at US$12.34 bil.

(By Annette Rowena)

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