Singapore Tourism Targets New Markets

Jyoti Koul - New Delhi

In a bid to tap the emerging potential pockets of the Indian market, Singapore Tourism recently unveiled the ’Uniquely Singapore’ campaign.The campaign was supported with the 6 city roadshows (the biggest eve) that were organised in the various parts of the country. These roadshows, according to Singapore Tourism Board (STB), mark the beginning of a series of consumer promotions, advertisement campaigns and trade activities that will propel a higher visibility of `Uniquely Singapore’ and strengthen the destination brand equity in the Indian market.

Its latest campaign, Uniquely Singapore attempts to bring the unique and enriching experiences of uniquely Singapore to the consumers with a focus on the mainly Indian family traffic. These roadshows are being conducted in a bid to strengthen and market Singapore in the primary metros besides the other potential future markets like Bangalore and Hyderabad. The emerging markets of Bangalore and Hyderabad have been strategically chosen for the consumer events, as these are new growth centres for outbound travel.

During these roardshows, the board’s industry partners emphasised on products such as amusement parks like wild wild wet, Escape-theme park, Santosa, Underwater world, Jurong bird park and night safari. However, the new development is that Singapore Tourism Board has appointed Merzban Majoo as new area director for Northern India, STB who will be focussing on eastern and northern Indian markets.

Said Majoo, “My focus is to expand the north Indian market besides focusing on the east. With this new campaign we will also look at exploring the emerging markets like secondary cities. We are also identifying the new market segments like incentive education.”

In July 2004, Singapore’s visitor arrivals hit a record high of 802,283 visitors. This is 12 per cent more than the last record of 714,944 visitors registered in July 2001. Singapore continues to see double digit growth in visitor arrivals with an 18 per cent growth over July 2002 (and 48 per cent growth over July 2003). Significant growth in visitor arrivals was registered as 38 per cent from India (when compared to July 2002).