From dog cruises to creepy tours, Ice Cream and Slingshot, Singapore rides out Covid and prepares for the future

Technology and sustainability at the coronary heart of adjust

THE Year of No Vacation might effectively be “one of the most fertile periods” in the Singapore tourism sector, with new items, activities and bundled offers currently being launched, said Keith Tan, chief executive of the Singapore Tourism Board (STB), as he issued a rallying cry on the field to “keep this creative imagination coming”.

Speaking at the STB Tourism Marketplace Conference yesterday (April 7), he urged, “Don’t drop the gains that you have manufactured and make sure you hold innovating and increasing your repertoire so that there is significantly much more to present to worldwide readers when they appear back again to Singapore.”

From doggy cruises to Creepy Tales to gamified murder mystery excursions, Singapore’s journey business is pulling out all the stops to adjust to a domestic market place, supported by STB programmes this kind of as the SingapoRediscover vouchers (which run to June) and Marketing and advertising Partnership Programme (MMP) which has supported near to 300 organisations. A 2nd version of MMP will be introduced this 12 months.

All these will be significantly essential as the news was also designed obvious that vacation is not likely to return at any time quickly, and that vaccinations, even though currently being ramped out, would not be the magic bullet to instantaneously open up borders. Firms, big and small, will have to obtain ways to go on to survive the prolonged wintertime whilst Singapore functions to a progressive opening.

To get ready for the long run, new assignments are in the will work. Tan declared three new attractions – Museum of Ice Product (MOIC), the popular US-based mostly attraction will open its initial locale outside the house the US in second half of 2021 Slingshot, Asia’s tallest slingshot, a new thrill ride concept, opening later this yr at Clarke Quay and SkyHelix Sentosa, Singapore’s first open up air panoramic attraction that enables readers scenic sights of Sentosa and Sentosa waterfront, opening 2022.

It has also released a tender for a new attraction concept in Orchard Road in attempts to diversify the precinct’s charms outside of procuring.

To prepare the industry for digital transformation, Tcube was introduced on the identical working day as the convention. It will enable enterprises in a 3-action Master-Examination-Construct framework. Businesses can do self-assessment with the Tourism Transformation Index (TXI) and get suggestions on how to change.

The
Singapore Tourism Accelerator programme, released in 2019, allows examination solutions
and to day, it has supported 21 startups to acquire 35 industry
alternatives.  It will increase the
Accelerator to September 2023. Underneath “Build”, STB has designed a suite of
smart services these as Tourism Information and Companies Hub (TIH) and Stan.

In
preparing for the foreseeable future, Tan singled out four difficulties that will impact
Singapore as very well as existing alternatives.

• “Remote almost everything”
With the acceleration of remote functioning and digital situations, how can Singapore keep its benefit to enterprise travellers and situations, and be eye-catching to electronic nomads? How can it keep on to give planet-major, expertise-making functions and pursuits? Minister For Trade and Sector Chan Chun Sing identified as on the MICE sector to imagine high quality, not amount, and assume awareness building vs scale in his remarks at the meeting.

•  Holistic wellness
How can Singapore become regarded as a main urban wellness haven, in which wellness offerings and activities are integrated into the day-to-day lifetime? “This is a serious challenge as “wellness” is not a top rated of intellect affiliation with Singapore nonetheless,” stated Tan. Other cities are stepping up, he reported, mentioning The Living Place by the Octave Institute in Shanghai and BelleCel in London.

•  Environmental sustainability
With this subject matter speedily getting to be a top rated of brain issue, how can Singapore turn out to be a leading sustainable and revolutionary city place? He urged the field to consider this critically as this was an existential challenge – a youthful generation of Singaporeans are providing it a lot more precedence as are travellers, citing a Booking.com study that confirmed 53{46dd52bca0123ad67b2d1222819e83fd0a56e45ca5068239f05f0c514f1e20f9} of world-wide travellers want to journey a lot more sustainability in the long term.

The Singapore Tourism Accelerator will be
expanded to address alternatives for sustainability. With the Singapore government’s
2030 Inexperienced System, Tan mentioned Singapore could be a excellent take a look at bed for sustainable
tourism remedies, this sort of as a internet zero-carbon lodge or amusement function.

• Technologies everywhere, each day for anyone
Investments have been made by sector in robotics, details analytics and intelligent systems, and Tan explained as a outcome, 6,000 guy hours had been saved every day in between April 2016 and January 2020, although 1,354 gentleman several hours have been saved day-to-day in 2020. Contactless solutions and applications have been adopted at scale in the course of Covid  – but which is only scratching the floor, he reported.

“Advances in connectivity, 5G, artificial
intelligence, augmented and virtual actuality, gamification, voice recognition
and several other locations – all will have a profound impact on the way men and women
journey,” he explained.

Urging the business to examination options, run pilots at platforms this sort of as Tcube, he claimed, “If we really do not do this, we will operate the risk of getting out-of-date, not able to keep up with the needs and anticipations of discerning high quality site visitors.”

So the gauntlet has been thrown and the market has to rise to the challenge. For now although, the private sector’s preoccupation is all-around how to continue on to endure on a little domestic market, with minimal inbound travel at minimum for the upcoming forseeable months.

See connected articles or blog posts:
• Really do not depend on travel to return whenever shortly, let us reinvent international vacation, STB challenges industry
• Keep your horses. Just simply because you have been vaccinated doesn’t mean you can vacation out of the blue

• Highlighted graphic credit rating (Artist rendering of the Sprinkle Pool at the future Museum of Ice Product Singapore): Museum of Ice Cream