Tourist satisfaction with local hotels crashed to 5-year low in Q3

Local attractions are losing their glam.

Here’s another blow to Singapore’s struggling tourism sector. Customer satisfaction for local tourism reverted to 2012 levels in the third quarter, according to the Q3 Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore released by the Institute of Service Excellence at the Singapore Management University.

In the tourism sector, two of the three sub-sectors registered significantly lower customer satisfaction scores. The Attractions sub-sector fell 9% year-on-year to 72.6-points, while the Hotels sub-sector declined 10.4% to 69.4 points, its poorest performance since 2009.

The Travel & Tour Services sub-sector registered a relatively shallower dip of 1.8% year-on-year to score 67.4-points.

Additional analysis also revealed a peculiar development in the Attractions sub-sector. Although both locals and tourist customers alike gave lower satisfaction scores this year compared to last year, their motivations were distinctly different.

Local customers were increasingly motivated by their expectations, or their predicted experience, of the attractions they visited. On the other hand, perceived quality was the primary driver of satisfaction for tourist visitors to attractions.

In both the F&B and Tourism sectors, analysis revealed lower tourists’ ratings of reliability. This is one contributing factor to the significant year-on-year decline in satisfaction.