Thailand, Japan and Vietnam welcomed more travellers from Singapore this year

SINGAPORE - Known to be avid holiday makers who seize every long weekends they can to pack their bags for a vacation, travelers in Singapore have chalked up more outbound trips by air in the first three quarters of this year, compared to last year. The first ever GfK Travelscan report registered over 684,000 leisure trips out of Singapore in January to September 2015—three percent more compared to the same time frame last year.

GfK, a key participating company at the TravelRave 2015, is one of the sponsors at the ITB Travel Forum and the WIT Singapore held at the Marina Bay Sands on October 20-23. GfK will be presenting interesting findings from the inaugural TravelScan Singapore report at the ITB Asia event. Travelscan is based on consolidated and aggregated industry booking data provided by members of the National Association of Travel Agents Singapore to GfK, with the aim of helping the industry better predict market developments.

According to findings from GfK Travelscan for January to September this year, China, Thailand and Hong Kong are the top three destinations among air travelers from Singapore, occupying 20%, 16% and 9% respectively of all outbound leisure flights.

In the first three quarters of 2015, the countries which registered significantly more visitors flying in from Singapore compared to the same period last year were Thailand, Japan, and Vietnam, where flight bookings rose by 44, 33, and 12 percent respectively.

“Thailand has always been an attractive destination for Singapore travellers and since the beginning of the year, we have been seeing a surge in the number of visitors flying in mostly to Bangkok, Phuket and Chiang Mai—the three most popular places in Thailand,” noted Laurens Van Den Oever, global industry lead for Travel & Hospitality at GfK. “The recent incident in Bangkok didn’t have any long term impact on local tourism it seems; flight cancellations was only for a couple of weeks after which booking patterns were back on course again.”

Although China remain as the most popular destination where around one in every five (19%) visitors from Singapore head for, this year saw a six percent drop in flight bookings from Singapore to the country. Hong Kong and Indonesia similarly reported declines by 11 and 8 percent.

“The latest data will help to provide a good indication of the industry’s latest development and consumers’ travel behavior and can definitely help players in the market strategize and plan their businesses more efficiently in anticipation of market trends,” Van Den Oever concluded.

GfK will be speaking at WIT 2015 on October 21 at 11:30 am, and ITB Asia Clinics on October 21 at 1:30 pm.

sourced:traveldailynews.asia