Hotel bookings for National Day celebrations holding up
Hotel bookings in the Marina Bay area for the upcoming National Day celebrations are holding up well, despite a slowdown in Singapore’s tourism sector.
Most of the hotels in the area expect their rooms facing the floating platform to be fully booked for this coming weekend.
Tourist arrivals may have slowed in Singapore and economic growth may be easing.
But this has not stopped Singaporeans from spending on the upcoming national day celebrations.
Checks with hotels in the Marina Bay area showed that they either expect this weekend’s occupancy levels to be the same as last year, or higher.
Rooms facing the floating platform were going at between 400 and more than 700 dollars per night.
Most of the bookings were made by Singaporeans, but a small number of guests include travellers from the region.
Singapore’s tourism sector only grew 2.9 percent in the first half of this year, while tourism receipts dropped marginally.
The Singapore Toursim Board, or STB, said the recent slowdown in the sector’s growth is mainly due to the weak global economic climate and higher air travel costs.
But the hotel sector seems to have been unaffected by this.
Public Relations Manager at Pan Pacific Hotel, Cheryl Ng, says the hotel has so far not felt any impact from the slowdown.
“There are cyclical factors, things like fluctuating demand from event organisers and corporate companies. However, the hotel’s performance is still continuing at a steady pace compared to last year. And we expect this to continue basically to the final quarter of 2008. The occupancy levels are comparable to last year, but there has been a slight increase in the average room rates. I would say that growth has continued, there’s definitely no regression.”
According to data from STB, the hotel sector continued to show strong results in the first six months of this year, with both room revenue and average room rate posting record figures
Source: 938Live
Filed under: Hotels, Property News
