A total of 715,000 visitors arrived in Singapore in September this year, up 1.4 percent year- on-year, according to the figures released by the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) on Tuesday.

 

The STB said that visitor days were estimated to reach 2.6 million, an increase of 7.4 percent in comparison to September 2005, as the visitors for International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Band Meeting would have stayed longer than the average visitor length of stay of 3.38 days of last year.

 

Indonesia, which contributed 136,000 visitors to Singapore in September, ranked first among the city state's top five visitor- generating markets for the month, followed by China, Australia, Japan and India. These five markets accounted for 50 percent of the total visitor arrivals for the month.

 

The top five markets with the highest growth in September were Vietnam, Republic of Korea, India, the United States and the Philippines.

 

Hotels in Singapore were estimated to register 190 million Singapore dollars (about 121 million U.S. dollars) in average room rate (ARR) in September, up 37.5 percent as compared with the corresponding month of last year. This is the highest ARR achieved for any month since 1995.

 

Average occupancy rate (AOR) reached 82 percent, registering a 3.8 percentage points decline over September 2005.

 

(Xinhua News Agency October 31, 2006)