SINGAPORE: It is not every day that Singapore takes centre stage in a global music video. Last week, Coldplay dropped their latest music video - with iconic Singapore landmarks such as Marina Bay Sands, Gardens by the Bay, Jewel Changi Airport and the Singapore Flyer, alongside heartland spots such as MacPherson and Geylang featured prominently in the nearly 4-minute video.

On the same day Coldplay’s Man In The Moon music video was released, there was a separate announcement that Singapore had secured a multi-year deal to bring NBA basketball events to Singapore.

The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) has certainly been hard at work - it had a role in both developments, which reinforce Singapore’s reputation as a world-class travel destination. However, visitor arrivals have not yet recovered to pre-COVID levels.

Last week, STB released its 2024 results and 2025 outlook, projecting 17 million to 18.5 million international visitor arrivals this year after attracting 16.5 million visitors last year.

The good news is that STB achieved the top end of its 2024 forecast of 15 million to 16.5 million visitors, while tourism receipts are set to reach new highs.

STB forecasts S$29 billion to S$30.5 billion (US$21.4 billion to US$22.5 billion) in tourism receipts in 2025, compared with S$27.7 billion in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic. The final figure for 2024 will not be available for a few more months but is expected to have easily exceeded S$28 billion. 

A CITY THAT DRAWS ATTENTION, BUT NOT ENOUGH VISITORS

The bad news is that if even if Singapore achieves 18.5 million visitor arrivals in 2025 - the top end of STB’s forecast - it would still be short of a full recovery compared to the pre-pandemic record of 19.1 million from 2019.

Meanwhile, passenger traffic - including arrivals, departures and transits - at Changi Airport has almost fully recovered at 67.7 million in 2024. Traffic will likely be 2 to 5 per cent above 2019 levels in 2025, but the conundrum is visitor arrivals a...