Tourist spending in 2024 set to be near 2019's $27.7b high: STB

Tourism Board expects 2023 strong tourism recovery to continue

- Anjali Raguraman

 

The strong tourism recovery in 2023 is expected to continue, with both international visitor arrivals and tourism receipts to climb further in 2024, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) said on Feb 1.

Visitor arrivals are forecast to hit 15 million to 16 million, bringing in approximately $26 billion to $27.5 billion in tourism receipts in 2024. This builds on 2023's numbers, when the Republic had 13.6 million visitors and tourism receipts were estimated to be between $24.5 billion and $26 billion.

That means tourist spending will almost hit the pre-pandemic high of $27.7 billion in 2019, but expected visitor numbers will still be shy of the 19.1 million arrivals recorded that year, before Covid-19 brought air travel to a standstill.

STB noted that visitor arrivals for 2023 came within the forecast set out at the start of the year for 12 million to 14 million arrivals, but that tourism receipts surpassed the expected $18 billion to $21 billion.

Visitor arrivals in 2023 were buoyed by Indonesia, China and Malaysia, which were the top three markets with 2.3 million, 1.4 million and 1.1 million visitors, respectively. Other key markets that posted buoyant recovery included Australia, South Korea and the United States.

China topped the chart in tourist spending with $2.3 billion, followed by Indonesia ($2.2 billion) and Australia ($1.5 billion). Indonesia had topped the list in 2022, contributing $1.1 billion then.