Singapore is already a great tourist destination however recently the equatorial island has become a flourishing entry point for Indian cruise-ship passengers which includes great cruises such as Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. and Genting Hong Kong Ltd. As per reports around 100,000 Indians sailed from Singapore last year which is 29 percent more than the number in 2015. This way India is turning to be the biggest market for cruises departing from the Southeast Asian Nation as per the reports shared by the Singapore Tourism Board. As per an Indian customer who chose to do a four day cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Voyager of the seas stated that “We chose to go on a cruise because we could visit three countries in one short trip.” In this trip he and his family cruised along Malaysian city of Penang and Thai Island of Phuket. The family spend around $7,000 but the experience was worth it as per them.
A research company says that this expenditure is a part of the 777.3 billion rupees ($12 billion) that Euromonitor International predicts middle-class Indians will shell out on overseas leisure travel this year. The market is expanding about 10 percent annually and will eclipse 1 trillion rupees by 2020. As per Euromonitor though Middle East and France are more popular overseas destinations for Indians, Singapore and is expecting to register a 59 percent jump in arrivals from the world’s second most populous country from 2015 to 2020. Changi Airport group which manages Singapore’s international airport stated that among city’s top 10 inbound passenger markets India is among the fastest growing nation. In this year itself number of arrivals from India has increased 15 percent in the first five months of the year which is a great upward trend.
Chayadi Karim, a research associate with Euromonitor, says “Fly-cruise tourism has really taken off among Indian tourists,” To help, the Singapore government created the Cruise Development Fund, which supports travel agents and event organizers trying to get people to sail from Singapore, said Annie Chang, a director at the tourism board. The number of Indian passengers on Royal Caribbean ships jumped 149 percent so far this year, compared with the same period last year. This includes the peak summer school holiday period that runs in India from May to June, said Sean Treacy, the company’s Asia Pacific managing director.
“Singapore is a regional-hub port which is near many attractive Southeast Asian cruise destinations in Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam,” Treacy said. Voyages from Singapore offer Indian tourists the convenience of visiting multiple destinations across different countries on a single trip while unpacking only once, he said.
