Singapore’s mainstream media are reporting old news today.
Singapore collected a record 14.8 billion Singapore dollars ($9.8 billion) in tourism receipts last year even though the number of visitors dropped 1.6 percent to 10.1 million, the Straits Times and Channel NewsAsia websites are reporting today, quoting the Singapore Tourism Board.
But those figures were released by the tourism board on January 10. I quoted those figures myself in a post on January 30, where I also noted:
The top five markets for 2008 were Indonesia (1,730,000), China (1,080,000), Australia (820,000), India (770,000) and Malaysia (650,000), which accounted for about 50 percent of total visitor arrivals.
The one change I notice is the hotel industry is now reported to have earned 2.1 billion Singapore dollars last year. The January 10 press release reported the total hotel revenue from January to November was 1.9 billion Singapore dollars.
What’s new?
The tourism board did give new information today:
Singapore tourism shrank in December for a seventh month, as more visitors stayed home amid a global slowdown.
Tourist arrivals to Singapore fell to 880,000 in December, down 6.9 percent from the same month a year earlier, the Singapore Tourism Board said Tuesday. Hotels revenue dropped 7.4 percent to 141 million Singapore dollars ($93 million), the board said.
That was reported by the International Herald Tribune (IHT) today.
I don’t see it yet on the Straits Times and the Channel NewsAsia websites.
The IHT added:
While tourist revenue rose to a record 14.8 billion Singapore dollars ($9.8 billion) last year, it fell short of the government's goal of 15.5 billion Singapore dollars.
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