Singapore for years has set ambitious targets to increase tourist numbers and spending, but government limits on foreign workers may make it hard for the tourism industry to reach its targets, according to the Singapore Tourism Board (STB).
Around 67% of all workers in Singapore are in the service sector, including tourism.
Tourism-related industries, such as retail sales, hotels and restaurants, as well as gaming, account for 5-6% of the city-state’s gross domestic product (GDP), said Ashlynn Loo, area director for Thailand and Myanmar of the STB.
Exact figures are not available on the extent of the tourism labour shortage, she said, but business operators have reported growing problems.
Deputy Premier Tharman Shanmugaratnam last year announced the policy to limit the numbers of foreign workers entering the country. Singapore for decades has relied heavily on foreign labourers as well as professionals to help drive its economy. However, Singaporeans in recent years have started to blame foreigners for a host or problems, from stealing jobs to pushing up property prices and the cost of living.
In the services sector, existing foreign employees will not be affected by the policy, but it is becoming harder for newcomers to work in Singapore as the government wants to slow the growth rate of foreign worker numbers.
Filipino, Indian, Malaysian and Indonesian workers are among the largest groups of foreign workers in the services sector in Singapore.
“The labour shortage is our main concern for the growth of the tourism industry,” said Ms Loo.
Singapore, with a population of 5 million, last year welcomed 14.4 million international visitors, an increase of 9% from 2011, with estimated spending of about S$23 billion, a 3% rise from 2011.
Thailand, with a land mass more than 700 times that of Singapore and a population of 68 million, welcomed 22.3 million tourists last year.
Singapore has a target to attract 17 million foreign tourists and generate S$30 billion by 2015. But with the prospect of an increasingly limited workforce to serve them, longer-term planning is difficult. Ms Loo said the government was still working on its next 2020 target.
To help the tourism industry reach its potential, the government has been staging more training courses aimed at increasing workers’ productivity, she added.
Because the city-state also has limited physical capacity to serve increasing foreign tourists, it has been emphasising quality over quantity, both in the types of attractions it offers and the types of visitors it wants to see. It now has a more concrete direction for promoting its tourism products.
“We’ve run the YourSingapore campaign. We would like foreign tourists to know that Singapore will serve their different tourism demands, including dining, learning and experiencing our different attractions,” said Ms Loo.
The effort has been helped by the emergence of many new attractions in recent years, including Marina Bay Sands, River Safari, Gardens by the Bay, and Resorts World Sentosa. Others expected to open in 2014 are Jurong Lake District and the National Art Gallery. New hotels have also been built to serve international tourists.
Ms Loo said that creating “tourism events” has also been a good strategy because it makes it easy for tourists to make plans. They will also know exactly what they are going to experience.
In 2012, the estimated receipts from sightseeing and entertainment tourism including casinos of S$5.2 billion were the single largest source of tourism revenue. That was followed by the accommodation sector at S$5 billion, shopping at S$4.8 billion, and food and beverages at S$2.3 billion.
However, if other tourism components — airfares, port taxes, local transport, business, medical, education and transit visitor spending — were included, receipts from this sector would be the largest at an estimated S$5.8 billion.
Seventy-six percent of international arrivals into Singapore were from Asia, led by Indonesians.
Singapore has set an international visitor arrivals target of between 14.8 million and 15.5 million in 2013, an increase in a range of 2.8% to 7.6% from 2012. Forecast tourism receipts are between S$23.5 million and S$24.5 billion, rising in a range of 2.2% and 6.5%.