'New Asia - Singapore': communicating local cultures through global tourism

Abstract

The marketing tagline 'New Asia - Singapore' represents the positioning statement for Singapore's tourism development in the 1990s and beyond. Singapore is marketed as a city with a contrasting blend for 'Asian cultures' and modern 'Asian dynamism', able to satisfy the needs of regional visitors and Western tourists. In this paper, we explore the way local cultures are marketed and reconfigured for tourists and Singaporeans. We argue that although Singapore's place resources have remained relatively unchanged in the 1990s, its cultural resources and spaces are certainly not static and unchanging. On the contrary, local cultures are constantly being revalorised and re-interpreted because of tourism development. This argument is substantiated in two ways. First, Singapore's 'cultural stock' has been reconfigured to enhance the cultural offerings it has to offer visitors and residents; and second 'cultural landscapes' are being repackaged with new visual elements and narratives. Culture and tourism intersect with the result being the 'communication' of local cultural identities through the lens of global tourism. A two-way relationship between culture and tourism is thus established: while tourism provides an opportunity for Singapore's cultural resources to be redefined, likewise cultural landscapes are refashioned to meet the challenges of tourism in the new millennium.