The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) is allocating S$45 million for its SingapoRedisovers campaign to revitalise the country’s tourism sector by encouraging locals to discover hidden gems here.
In a Facebook post on Thursday (23 July), PAP’s Chan Chun Sing described the scale of disruption to the country’s tourism industry due to COVID-19 as “unprecedented”, adding, “Many of our tourism businesses and workers are struggling and the road ahead remains challenging until mass leisure travel is able to resume.”
He went on to say that the government’s immediate priority is “to make sure we save as many jobs as possible by helping businesses tide through this difficult period.” This will be done via the Job Support Scheme which Mr Chan said has supported more than 7,000 tourism businesses to save jobs and provide wage support to more than 1,600 self-employed tourist guides.
In the medium term, Mr Chan said they are working with businesses to “reinvent their models and redesign our tourism products and events”. To this end, he noted STB’s announcement that it has developed a risk management framework for business events of up to 50 attendees based on strict safety management measures which it intends to pilot with two events before scaling up gradually.
“If we can do this well in Singapore, we can show the way for the rest of the industry in other parts of the world to come together to work with us as well,” said Mr Chan.
Additionally, Mr Chan said: “We will also need to reimagine our offerings for locals and boost our local tourism industry. To this end, we are rolling out a $45 million SingapoRediscovers campaign that creates value-for-money experiences and promotions for locals to discover hidden gems amongst our midst.”
He shared the STB press release which talked about this campaign which focuses on three broad areas of partnering local communities to help locals discover hidden gems, curating precinct itineraries to create authentic experiences for local, and collaborating with partners in the industry to develop quality experiences and attractive promotions in the form of packaged mini-holidays called “Singapoliday”.
Beyond that, Mr Chan said, “We also remain committed to execute our long-term development plans for the tourism sector.”
He said that STB is aiming to launch the Request for Proposal for the integrated tourism development in Jurong Lake District by the end of this year, while STB and Singapore Tote Board are also exploring concepts for the redevelopment of the Singapore Racecourse @ Kranji as a “leisure destination”.
“These developments are all signs of our confidence in the tourism industry and our determination to keep investing to create good business opportunities and good jobs for our workers so that we can continue to compete globally,” said Mr Chan.
He added, “Though there are headwinds in the short-term, we will continue to work with all the businesses and workers in the industry to overcome our challenges, and emerge stronger together.”