GTA helps drive visitors back to Singapore

GTA has developed two new initiatives designed to drive more visitors to Singapore.

Under a new Strategic Partnership Program (SPP), announced late last week, the travel distributor will showcase 22 three- to five-star hotels to markets no more than seven hours flying time away from Singapore, including key markets in Australia, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and the UAE, and secondary cities in China, India and Indonesia.

Brands including Fairmont-Raffles, Far East Hospitality, Fragrance Hotel Management, Resorts World Sentosa and Ritz-Carlton will be promoted by GTA at special Singapore seminars for travel agents in the selected source markets.

And GTA has also penned a year-long, SG$2 million (US$1.5m) partnership with SilkAir, which will see the two companies collaborate on marketing initiatives to bring more traffic to Singapore.
GTA’s regional vice president of sales & marketing for Asia Pacific, the Middle East & Africa, Daryl Lee, said he hoped the two programmes would help Singapore reverse a recent decline in visitor arrivals.

“With increasing competition from neighbouring destinations and a misconception by some that Singapore is expensive and sterile, visitors to Singapore have fallen 3.1% to 15.1 million in 2014 – the first drop since 2009,” said Lee. “GTA’s success in bringing a million tourists to Singapore, gives us the ability to address these challenges.

“Collectively, our aim is to drive stronger awareness of destination Singapore among travel sellers, especially in secondary cities in China, India and Indonesia, and develop mystery markets across the GTA distribution network for our hotel partners,” he added.

GTA is already one of the largest generators of travel into Singapore, helping to bring close to one million tourists to the city last year.

sourced:traveldailymedia.com