SWOT Analysis of Singapore Tourism

Tourism is at its rapid expanding stage which most of people now in the 21th century are traveling and visiting attractions all around the world. There are so many states which are Africa, the ‎Americas, East Asia and the Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and South Asia, within all this region there are so many countries and states that can be counted as a tourism destination and attraction as long as it is accessible to people there will be tourist.

Singapore has one of the largest service sectors in tourism. For Singapore to take this advantage as a tourism destination, it has contributed 3% of Singapore’s GDP which has generated some of US$ 9.4 billion. Being one of the most popular countries in Asia, Singapore has been growing very rapidly for the past few years. With the help of the tourism industry, it has strengthened the infrastructure developments, in addition of various events and the countries strategic location in the heart of region. This shows how much the role of tourism industry can play in Singapore’s economy. To ensure that tourism remains a key economic pillar, a bold target, Tourism 2015, was unveiled in the year 2005. The objectives of Singapore is to triple the tourism receipts to US$ 30 Billion, doubling visitor arrivals to 17 Million, and creating an additional 100,000 jobs in the services sector by 2015, according to “Opportunities in Singapore Tourism Industry (2007-2009)”. Having all these advantages, the negatives are also a factor to look at so by doing this research; I will have a better view on the impacts, advantages and disadvantages.

http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/463815/opportunities_in_singapore_tourism_industry_2007

1.3 Literature Review

In the few books I have read like Tourism in South-East Asia, Tourism impacts, planning and management and Tourism management: managing for change. These books are written by the following authors Peter Manson, Michal Hitchcock and Stephen Page. The content of the book have the different kinds of effects from tourism and changes countries have to face and how can they cope with it. I felt that many of the fact that are stated in the books are very agreeable like in the Tourism impacts, planning and management book written by Peter Mason “The impacts of tourism can be positive or beneficial, but also negative or detrimental. Whether impacts are perceived as positive or negative depends on the value position and judgment of the observer of the impacts.” This shows that no matter how people research on any of the impacts there are always another way to view positive to a negative and negative to a positive. For the Tourism management: managing for change by Stephen Page quoting “It is widely recognized that a range of factor impact upon the success or failure of visitor attractions as tourism enterprises. This has to be viewed against growing visitor expectations during their visit and the need for attractions to improve standards in many countries worldwide.” what I have understood is the tourist has ever changing taste and to keep up countries have to upgrade or maintain what they have now or they would lose out. By using the research question expanding the search of the topic would be a clearer view of achieving the objective.

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1.4 Source of information

Tourism is now a very vase integrated subject involving many sectors. So by researching information on Books like Tourism in South-East Asia, Tourism impacts, planning and management and Tourism management: managing for change the books tells how and what are the different situations. The other source would be from the internet where I can find millions of information regarding tourism and destinations. Using the search engine Google I would search the key word from: Tourism Impact, Singapore tourism, future of Singapore 2015. With just these few words I am able to get a few data on tourism. Because of a limitation of time I can only use the secondary research data on all that are done.

Questions

1 What makes Singapore a popular tourism destination?

2 What are the challenges faced by Singapore as a tourism destination?

3 What are the impacts of tourism?

4 How will Singapore maintain its popularity in the future?

Objectives

• To analyze what attracts tourist to Singapore and why
• To understand what challenges faced by Singapore in attracting tourist
• Evaluating impacts of tourism on Singapore
• To find what Singapore will do to keep up with other countries in the future.

1. What makes Singapore a popular tourism destination?

Although Singapore is a small country, the amount of entertainment is compatible to other countries. Being one of the leading tourist destinations in Asia and with millions of visits every year, Singapore is also popular for business traveling destination because of the large number of exhibitions and conferences are organized every month in Singapore. A destination is a place which is created for a purpose, that is what Singapore have done they have created a destination where tourist comes to visit. The following attractions are made or modified in a way so that it can accommodate people. To stay popular Singapore have keep up with the trend of others and improving and expanding it. Examples like allowing casinos to be built when the pass few years which has been denied many times.

The main categories of the popularity in Singapore now are listing bellow:

-Attraction

-Stability

-economical

-cosmopolitan

-Events

-Festival

What I think is of how Singapore has to struggle to survive in the economic sense. Singapore have made it big and achieved a better economic structure but all these comes with a price they have to get a number of people to work in the attractions but also entertain the tourist so the number of people that are working in the tourism industry in Singapore is high resulting a high in reliance on tourism.

SWOT part1

(S)trengths

• Leading tourist destinations in Asia
• popular for business traveling
• Rich in economy
• Safe

(O)pportunities

• Strategic location
• Tourists arrivals
• Tourism receipts
• Outbound tourism
• Outbound tourism expenditure
• Medical tourism industry
• MICE industry

(W)eaknesses

• Small country
• Limitations on amount of visitors
• Limited resources
• Manmade attractions
• Limited natural environment

(T)hreats

• Countries mimic
• Terrorism

3 What are the impacts of tourism?

1.5 Methodology

PESTE

Political, economical, socio-cultural, technological, environmental

The six elements of the tourism have is advantage however the disadvantage are high too in order to understand it we have to look at two different perspective which is the positive and negative. Everyone have different perspective no matter how good a situation is there is always a downside.

(P)olitical

Positive

• More order in country
• Improve diplomatic ties

Negative

• Terrorism
• Strict reinforcement

(E)conomic

Positive

• Contributes to income and improve standard of living.
• Improves local economy
• Increases jobs that decreases unemployment rate
• Increases tax revenues.
• Improves infrastructures
• Increase investors

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_positive_economic_impacts_of_tourism

Negative

• Increase in food, land, houses would be more expensive for the locals
• Part-time, semi-skilled, poor paid and taking away traditional jobs
• Seasonal jobs such as these could then possibly lead to high rates of unemployment.
• Dependent on the tourism
• Inflation
• Leakage

(S)ocio-culture

Positive

• Traditional art or handicraft result from tourist
• Responsible cultural tourism
• experience and understand new culture
• reduce negative perception
• tolerance
• integrated world
• culture pride

Negative

• language barrier
• pick up bad habits
• cultural conflicts
• loss culture identity

(T)echnological

Positive

• improvement in technology
• improve in booking system which leads to easier booking so therefore a increase in tourism
• able to get information easily online

Negative

• increase in scam
• might have a negative perspective on a country after reading reviews

(E)nvironment

Positive

• increase in national park for tourist limited damage / even limited damage still does damage
• increase awareness of maintaining nature partly because of profit because when maintained more tourist would come back to visit again

http://www.gdrc.org/uem/eco-tour/envi/four.html

Negative

• Pollution from more vehicles demand
• litters dropped by visitors
• disturbance of natural habitats and cause damages the landscape
• land clear for more attractions/ amenities
• heavy usage on resources

4. How will Singapore maintain its popularity in the future?

Singapore to compete with other countries would be a challenge but it has made it. Being 1st in doing what others could not. Examples like that F1 Night race and the coming 2010 youth Olympics will be here 1st. The need for Singapore to stay competitive is the ideas that are made and are being able to be executed. In 2005 Minister for Trade and Industry, Mr. Lim Hng Kiang shows the planning that is being done to triple Tourism Receipts (TR) to S$30 billion, doubling visitor arrivals (VA) to 17 million, and creating an additional 100,000 jobs in the services sector by 2015.

1.6 Recommendations

The current tourism situation in Singapore is doing quite well and achieving the 2015 would not be a problem with all the new attractions and events coming up. However currently there are advantages and disadvantages in Singapore, the advantage Singapore has now should be maintained and improved. The disadvantages should be overcome to be competitive in the future.

ADVANTAGES

• counted the safeties country
• minimum crime (robbery, stabbing, riots, and protests)
• natural disaster harder hits Singapore cause of being surrounded by other countries

DISADVANTAGES

• lack of service experience
• bad services
• strict laws
• high in tax

1.7 Analysis

After doing all the research I have analyzed that tourism is like a product and there is the product life cycle and Singapore is at its growth stage and with the coming youth Olympic, the growth will increase because in the future there would be more new attractions like the two new integrated resorts and theme parks that comes with it to boost the economy. Although there still maybe a few disadvantages and negative impacts Singapore could improve and control on what is bad. Being a small country has its disadvantage but how different people look at it is that because it is small it is more easily manageable compared to a big country. To see it this way Singapore can increase the tourism weather now or in the future despite the negatives. I will do a further in depth study on the PEST and SWOT analysis to see it more in detailed.

1.8 Conclusion

Singapore Tourist could be a very useful element in the country’s economic how ever there are many other reasons they can be helpful too. In my opinion best thing about tourism is mainly because of the economic that is why almost every country they are promoting tourism and trying to attract people to their country. Same thing goes to Singapore without tourism the country would lose three per cent of Singapore’s GDP and more than S$12 billion in tourism receipts. Looking at the PEST and SWOT analysis countries can help understand and improve the tourism and look after the locals so both party would not be affected in a bad way.