Singapore visitor arrivals fall 15.2 pct in Feb

Reuters, Thu Mar 26, 2009 4:13am EDT

SINGAPORE, March 26 (Reuters) - Singapore suffered a 15.2 percent drop in visitor arrivals in February from a year ago as the global economic downturn hurt tourism, the government said on Thursday.

The fall in visitors comes at a time when Singapore is trying to boost tourism by building two multi-billion-dollar casinos with thousands of hotel rooms attached to them.

The Singapore Tourism Board said in a statement that last month around 689,000 visitors came to the city-state, which is just half the size of Greater London. The figure compares with 813,000 guests in February last year.

Last month' figure was also lower than the 772,000 visitors in January and 888,000 in December 2008.

The largest number of visitors came from Indonesia, China, Australia, Britain and Malaysia, which together accounted for 48 percent of the total.

The agency also said the average hotel room rate in Singapore fell 20.6 percent to S$205 ($136) in February from a year ago, while hotel occupancy fell to 76 percent from 79.3 percent.

Las Vegas Sands (LVS.N) is scheduled to open its Marina Bay Sands casino in Singapore before the end of this year, while Genting International's (GNTG.SI) Resorts World at Sentosa will open sometime next year.

Singapore expects visitor arrivals to fall to between 9 million and 9.5 million in 2009 from 10.1 million last year. ($1=1.507 Singapore Dollar) (Reporting by Nopporn Wong-Anan; Editing by Kevin Lim & Jan Dahinten)