Chart of the day: Take a look at the stunning drop in Singapore’s tourist arrivals in May

There’s no turnaround in sight.

Wealthy tourists from Mainland China are the lifeblood of Singapore’s tourism industry. But preliminary numbers from the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) show a worrying drop in the number of Chinese tourists who visited the country in the first half of the year.

Data from the STB show that overall visitor arrivals for January to May were down 1.7 per cent at 6.3 million from a year ago.

A greater cause for worry is the 27.4% drop in Chinese tourist arrivals for the same period. For the first quarter of 2014, tourist arrivals from the Mainland fell 14% to 557,466.

According to a report by DBS, "Chinese tourists to Singapore, who typically also visit Thailand and Malaysia, are understood to have continued to avoid South East Asia due to the political situation in Thailand and MH370 incident."