Outbound travel from Vietnam has also increased in recent years astravel as a lifestyle activity gains popularity among the Vietnamese,the board added.
Singapore’s international visitorarrivals in the January-March period held steady at 3.9 million from thesame quarter last year. Indonesia, China, Malaysia, Australia,and Japan were Singapore’s top five tourist sources.
TheRepublic of Korea (RoK) was ranked seventh with 153,000 arrivals,up 17 percent year-on-year. The STB attributed the growth for RoKvisitors to an appreciation of the Korean Won and the introduction ofScoot as the only low-cost carrier flying the Singapore-Seoul route fromJune 2013.
Conversely, arrivals from China slowed down by14 percent year-on-year, following a decline of 31 percent in the lastquarter of 2013, due to the continued impact of the tourism law that wasintroduced on October 1 last year.
Also according to astatement released by the STB on July 21, in the first quarter of thisyear, tourism receipts grew 5 percent year-on-year to 6.0 billion SGD,driven by sightseeing, entertainment and gaming (up 19 percent),accommodation (up 2 percent) and other components (up 5 percent).Gazetted hotel room revenue showed a 12- percent increase to hit 0.8billion SGD.-VNA