World Travel News

Singapore Airlines and Tourism Australia (TA) have signed a deal potentially worth more than $12 million to promote Australia as a tourist destination.

The push comes amid continuing debate about Singapore Airlines should be allowed access to the lucrative trans-Pacific air route, now dominated by local carrier Qantas and US airline United.

The three-year global destination marketing partnership between the airline and TA was announced on Monday by the Minister for Small Business and Tourism, Fran Bailey MP.

“The Australian Government welcomes the ongoing commitment of Singapore Airlines to promoting Australia as a tourism destination and I would particularly like to thank Chew Choon Seng, Singapore Airlines chief executive officer, for coming out to Australia for this important event,” Ms Bailey said in Canberra.

After the recent bomb blasts, Bali’s tourism industry is expected to take its second beating in three years, and industry watchers anticipate tourist confidence to be restored only over the next 2 to 3 years.

Meantime, holidaymakers can expect cheaper airfares and hotel rates as Bali tries to get back on its feet.

The blasts in popular tourist hotspots Kuta and Jimbaran have rocked the island’s tourism industry, which makes up some 70 percent of its economy.

Many say the bombings will also have repercussions on Indonesia’s tourism sector.

Edutainment is a potentially lucrative aspect of tourism Singapore should capitalise on, says a US tourism professor.

Joe Goldblatt, professor of tourism and hospitality management at Temple University, says more can be done to merge entertainment with education through seminars, symposiums and hands-on experience.

He says tourists, especially mature ones, are hungry for culture and education, apart from soaking in the sights and sounds.

Bright, colourful and shiny, Chinatown is all lit up for the Mid-Autumn Lantern festival.

But ask Singaporeans about the history or cultural significance of the festival, and you are likely to draw a blank.

For tourists hungry for culture, there are also few avenues to find out more.

Yet, this information void smacks of a tremendous opportunity that can be tapped.

Said Professor Goldblatt, “One example will be your lantern festival. If there are no seminars before the festival, during the festival, and after the festival, you are missing an important part of the market.”

He added, “Every event, every attraction that you attend in Singapore should be a learning opportunity. There should be an opportunity to take a workshop, attend a course, a lecture, a symposium.”

But there is a qualifier – the education aspect has to be well integrated into the event.

Prof Goldblatt cites the Disney Institute in Orlando as a good example.

He said, “If you want to learn about management, you go underground at Disney, and see how the operations are organised. If you want to learn about time management, you are taught time management by the people who actually work at the park, and supervise the staff, the cast members there. It’s fully integrated; it’s not separate in the park.”

Online travel bookings in Asia are set to double 2003’s figures to US$16 billion by 2006, according to a report by Asia’s leading air ticketing and reservations company.

An estimated 29 percent of regional air travel bookings will be made online by the end of 2005, up sharply from 3.5 percent in the previous year, Singapore-based Abacus International said over the weekend.

“These figures are very encouraging and are by no means the peak, suggesting that there is still immense growth potential in online travel,” Abacus chief executive Don Birch said.

The report cited the increasing ease of access to the Internet within the region and the emergence of budget carriers as major factors contributing to the online travel boom.

“With Internet penetration levels continuing to rise steadily throughout the Asia-Pacific region, the result is more Internet-savvy travellers,” Abacus said.

Besides the traditional markets of Japan and Australia, residents in tech-savvy Taiwan and Hong Kong are also fast embracing online travel, which refers to the purchase of travel products such as air tickets, hotel rooms, short-haul packages and weekend breaks over the Internet.

The increasing proliferation of low cost carriers (LCC) in the region, accompanied by their “online-centric” sales model, has also drawn travellers to go online when making their bookings.

More: channelnewsasia.com

The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) hopes to increase the number of foreign students in Singapore from the current 50,000 to 150,000 in the next seven years.

Students come mainly from Japan and other Asian countries, but the STB hopes to expand its outreach programme to include countries in the Middle East.

The programme involves a series of study trips for the foreign students.

The STB hopes that the happy memories of such study trips will lead them to make Singapore their top choice when it comes to studying abroad.

At one such trip, a campfire was organised for a group of foreign students aged between eight and 15 years old.

More: channelnewsasia.com