Rituparna Chatterjee – Mumbai
Singapore Tourism Board (STB) is currently tapping new traveller segments like women and school students from India with a view to increase Indian tourist footfall into Singapore. Speaking on the sidelines of STB’s recently concluded roadshow in Mumbai, Chang Chee Pey, executive director – Europe, South Asia, Middle East and Africa, International Group, STB, stated, “We want to look at newer segments like women travellers and school students. Last year, we worked with Thomas Cook to create women centric packages. We ran a campaign from September-October to promote the packages and in these two months we got about 814 women passengers. This included groups going for bachelorette and hen parties. These packages were segregated according to interest levels. There were experiences like cultural walking tours, cycling tours, etc. In future, we would want to work with more partners and come up with more unique women centric packages.”
Another segment that STB is focusing on is oversees school trips. Pey explained, “We started investing more in this segment from the last one-two years. Last year, we worked with Thomas Cook for the Thomas Cook Travel Quest, an inter-school quiz competition, where around 20,000 students participated representing 60 schools from all over India. We hosted the four shortlisted winning teams in Singapore and they were taken to Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, among others. This time we are doing a series of school roadshows. We have already covered Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Bhubaneshwar and will now cover Hyderabad, Chennai and other schools down south.”
Meanwhile, STB will continue to focus on incentive groups from India apart from more traditional segments like families. “Last year, we secured more than 60,000 visitor nights from India for incentive. We need to grow our share of the incentive market. Cruise is another important segment for us. India is still the largest foreign cruise market for Singapore,” added Pey.
Last year, Singapore received more than one million tourists from India, recording a growth of 7.4 per cent. There are talks of Scoot, a Singapore-based low-cost, long-haul airline, flying to Jaipur. “Hope this will happen soon as this will give a boost to the arrivals,” he concluded.