TOURISM MANAGEMENT IN SINGAPORE : POLICIES, ISSUES & OPTIONS

Abstract

A recent study by the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) has estimated that travel and tourism industry in Singapore would make up 12% or $19.1 billion of its GDP in year 2000. This is attributed to the fact that much of the global tourism industry will come from the Asia-Pacific region, a reflection of the region's rapid economic growth. Hence, tourism industry is an important engine driving Singapore's economy. While this is so, there are signs that the tourism engine is slowing down. These include shorter tourist average stay, a fall in expenditure per tourist and a slow down in visitor growth over 1985-95. These factors have culminated in Tourism 21, a national tourism plan, which will act as a strategic architecture for Singapore's tourism industry, in response to the changing face of tourism in the region and the world. With Tourism 21, Singapore Tourist Promotion Board (STPB) aims to achieve 10 million tourist arrivals and $16 billion tourism receipts by the year 2000. This thesis seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of how the tourism has been managed in Singapore over the years and what plans are being made to promote the industry in future so that it can make even greater contributions to the economy. The study is organised as follows: First, the process of tourism management in Singapore will be examined by interviewing the tourism planners working in STPB and some other travel-related organisations. Second, I will try to identify the challenges and key management issues faced by the tourism and hotel industry by interviewing relevant people. Third, an attempt will be made to forecast the tourism demand in Singapore by using a regression model. Finally, I will evaluate the policies and options suggested by the experts for the future development of the tourism industry. It has been observed that several useful approaches such as quality tourism, total business approach and thematic development approach have already been applied to the tourism planning in Singapore. In addition, the concept of Tourism Unlimited implying borderless tourism market has also been applied. The study also identified the challenges and key management issues faced by the tourism industry. The main issues are regional cooperation, regional competition, cost of operations and manpower shortage. The ideal solution to these problems seems to be the formation of strategic alliances on a macro scale. The tourism demand is found to be highly income elastic with an increase of 3.17 tourist arrivals for every unit increase in income of tourist generating markets. The forecasting results revealed great potential for tourism demand, which is expected to generate ten million arrivals by the year 2000. Quite interestingly, this ten million mark corresponds to the target set by STPB by the same year. In this sense, the 10 million visitors may seem to be an 'optimal' target for tourism in Singapore.