Singapore on Tuesday began quarantine-free entry for fully vaccinated passengers from eight countries -- not including Thailand -- as part of a plan to ease restrictions while the business hub gears up to live with the coronavirus.
The latest easing expanded a programme that began with vaccinated air travel lanes with Germany and Brunei last month, and is now open to passengers from the United States, Canada, Britain, Denmark, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands.
Singapore Airlines said flights from Amsterdam, London, Los Angeles and New York were scheduled to arrive Tuesday under the programme.
"We have seen very strong demand for our Vaccinated Travel Lane flights," the national airline told AFP.
"This is across all cabin classes, as well as various travel segments including leisure, families, and business travel."
Passengers arriving as part of this scheme -- which will include South Korea from Nov 15 -- will not have to quarantine if they have been fully vaccinated and test negative for the virus before they depart and when they arrive.
To enable families to travel, Singapore has allowed entry to unvaccinated children aged 12 years and under if they are accompanied by someone flying under the scheme.
Raj Samuel, a restaurant manager in the almost deserted tourist district, said he was "optimistic" about the potential for more business.
"I think it's an excellent move by the country to help open up the economy... especially for the food and beverage sector," the 36-year-old told AFP, adding he was "looking forward to having more guests."
Kylie Jens, a 29-year-old lawyer from New Zealand living in Singapore, said she is planning to go to Britain for Christmas under the scheme.
"Singapore is just such a small island, it's nice to have a chance to get away and know that that's possible pretty soon," she told AFP.
The city-state initially fought the Covid-19 pandemic by shutting borders, imposing lockdowns of varying intensity and aggressive contact tracing. But with more than 80% of the population fully vaccinated, authorities are keen to revive the economy.
"Singapore cannot stay locked down and closed off indefinitely," Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said earlier this month when he announced a raft of measures under the "Living with Covid-19" strategy.
The city-state is home to the regional offices of thousands of multi-national corporations, which rely on Singapore's status as a business and aviation hub for their operations.
Vaccinated travel is a "very significant step forward in re-establishing Singapore's role as one of the Asia-Pacific's leading international hubs for finance, regional headquartering and commercial aviation," said Rajiv Biswas, Asia Pacific chief economist at IHS Markit.
He added that the travel lanes -- notably with the UK, the US, France, and Germany -- were particularly important as many international firms run large operations from the city's financial centre.
The scheme may also provide a shot in the arm for the pandemic-hammered airline and tourism industries, analysts said.
Before the pandemic, tourism accounted for about five percent of Singapore's GDP, said Song Seng Wun, a regional economist with CIMB Private Banking.
"We used to get 1.6 million tourists every month, our airport used to handle over a thousand flights a day pre-pandemic. Now it is just over 300 flights a day," he told AFP.
Statistics from the Singapore tourism board showed international visitor arrivals plunging to less than 2.8 million last year from a record 19.1 million in 2019.