45% of Singapore attractions reported decline in visitors

Singapore's record 20.2% growth in tourist arrivals last year is not all good news as some of the attractions had a 28% decline in visitorship figures.

According to the Association of Singapore Attractions, 55% of attractions polled registered improvements in visitorship ranging from as little as 1% to over 100% growth compared to Year 2009.

The remaining 45% of attractions polled reported a decline in visitorship figures by 1% to as much as 28%.

Collectively, the attractions sector reported a total attendance of more than 34 million visitors, out of which 50.2% are locals and 49.8% are tourists. This represented a 56.3% net increase over the previous year's figures.

These results were announced by the ASA after a recently concluded survey of the 2010 visitorship performance for its members. A total of 31 of its member attractions representing the lion’s share of attractions in Singapore participated in the survey. They include major tourism and lifestyle destinations like the Singapore Zoo, Night Safari, Sentosa Leisure Group, National Heritage Board museums, and the Singapore Science Centre.

“Our inaugural survey revealed that while national tourist arrivals grew by one-fifth in 2010, its influence wasn’t evenly felt across Singapore attractions. We’ve also discovered that the IRs tend to benefit the attractions on Sentosa island more so than any other location. ASA will continue to work with our members and industry partners like the Singapore Tourism Board and travel trade stakeholders on collaborative programmes to promote our attractions and encourage patronage from arriving visitors. We will continue to make available key industry trends so that members can weave these findings into their business strategies.” commented Kevin Cheong, ASA Chairman.

For the survey, respondents were sorted according to the type (Adventure & Rides, Museums & Heritage, Nature & Parks, Edutainment & Lifestyle, and Multi Offerings), gated and non-gated attractions, location (Civic District, Outside Civic District, Sentosa Island) and the ratio of locals versus tourists. From their submissions, several key findings could be found:

• The opening of Resorts World Sentosa may have played a catalytic role on Sentosa island. Overall visitorship to the island spiked tremendously by 185%. It is likely that all attractions on the island enjoyed positive spillover effects.
• Gated or paid attractions in the Civic District suffered a dip in their visitorship performance by 4.4%, while gated attractions outside the city centre and Sentosa cluster showed a slight 1.2% decline in their visitorship performance. Overall, gated attractions in Singapore, excluding those on Sentosa, registered a marginal decline in visitorship by 0.2% in Year 2010.
• Visitorship to non-gated and free access attractions grew by a whopping 120%. This was attributed to the opening of new attractions during the year as well as the organic growth amongst incumbent players.
• When sorted by type, gated attractions in both the adventure and rides as well as edutainment and lifestyle categories saw modest growths of 2.2% and 6.7% respectively in visitorship.
• In terms of visitor profile, the gated and paid attractions outside Sentosa reported 46% of their visitors are tourists. The non-gated and free access attractions outside Sentosa showed 37% of their visitors are tourists. Collectively, attractions outside Sentosa reported that local visitors grew by 10.4% year on year basis, while the tourists number dipped by 3.2% year on year basis.
• For the gated and paid attractions on Sentosa that responded to the survey, 76% of the visitors are tourists. This represents an 8.1% increase over year 2009.

Moving ahead, ASA would continue to conduct regular surveys and studies to capture useful industry and market information. Armed with these statistics and findings, the association would work with various government and non-government bodies to develop collaborative programmes and initiatives to further its members’ business interests. These would cover the areas of training and HR standards, service excellence, branding and marketing development, as well as overall public awareness and interest in the attractions sector. In addition, ASA is planning to work with the individual attractions operators and relevant agencies to assist and advise the attractions who were not able to ride the wave of growth.