Spotlight: Vacation devoid Singaporeans resort to staycation amid COVID-19 pandemic
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E-mail Xinhua, August 27, 2020
by Wang Lili
SINGAPORE, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- A couple of days ago, Ms Shu Ran, a local resident living in a condo near Singapore's Bukit Timah Mountain, had left home for a two-day vacation. Unlike her previous trips abroad, this time she and her family enjoyed the holiday at a local hotel less than 20 miles away.
Shu said staying at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel was really relaxing, either by overlooking the lush greenery of the Gardens by the Bay from the hotel room and the horizon of the sea, or reveling in the ravishing night view from the rooftop infinity pool.
As the hotel's weekend rooms were fully booked, Shu Ran made a reservation of a room during the weekdays when her 12-year old son's school was not in a break. However, her son found no difficulty in going to school in the early morning after having breakfast at the hotel and returned there after school. Shu, during the daytime, enjoyed herself by shopping at the luxury stores at the ground levels of the hotel complex and meeting with friends at the hotel lobby.
Shu's way of spending the holiday is called staycation, a combination of "stay" and "vacation", which means holiday-goers enjoy themselves without travelling far and wide. It's said that staycation is most popular among Singaporeans worldwide.
Li Liangyi, Chairman of the Singapore-based China Express Travel(s) Pte Ltd, thought this is partly due to the fact Singapore is a small country with a limited land area and residents are so familiar with the local attractions.
Thus, staycation stands out which enables Singaporeans a feeling of vacation with little travel cost and low requirement on their time schedules, he added.
For the time being, because of the border control measures many countries have imposed in an attempt to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus, Singaporeans who miss trips overseas find more comfort in staycation, especially after the government has advised its people to defer all non-essential travels.
In another development, Singapore has barred all short-term visitors from entering Singapore, starting from 23:59 p.m. March 23. According to statistics released by Singapore's Ministry of Trade and Industry(MTI), the accommodation and food services sector contracted by 41.4 percent year-on-year during the second quarter this year, sharper than the 23.8 percent decline in the preceding quarter.
The accommodation segment shrank "on the back of a plunge in international visitor arrivals arising from border controls and weak global travel demand," MTI said in a press release.
As a whole, the Singapore economy contracted by 13.2 percent on a year-on-year basis in the second quarter, worsening from the 0.3 percent contraction in the previous quarter.
Among all the domestically-targeted control measures, the toughest is the Circuit Breaker Singapore had rolled out from April 7 to June 1, during which all local tourist attractions were shut temporarily, and employees at non-essential service sectors turned to work at homes instead of at offices.
With the diminishing of local confirmed cases, the Singapore Tourism Board has announced on July 3 that hotels can apply for resumption of serving guests for the purposes of leisure, such as staycation. As of Aug. 21, 207 hotels have been granted such permissions.
Needless to say, staycation has helped, in some way, to cushion the local accommodation industry from the attacks of the deadly virus.
Local media reported that the hotels given green lights to welcome staycation guests have offered various discounts or favorable packages to lure patrons. For this year's three-day National Day holiday from Aug. 8 to 10, several hotels have recorded relatively high occupancy rates, thanks to the influx of local guests.
In a bid to boost the badly-battered tourism industry, Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Heng Swee Keat disclosed earlier this month that the Singaporeans will be given 320 million SG dollars (230 million U.S. dollars) in "tourism credits" to spend domestically. The credits will be called SingapoRediscovers Vouchers, named after the campaign launched last month to drive local spending to eateries, shops, hotels and leisure attractions.
More details of the vouchers will to be released later. Yet according to a survey conducted by the local media Lianhe Zaobao, 49 percent respondents say they wish the vouchers be used to subsidize their stays in local hotels, compared with 25 percent on tickets of tourist attractions.
Lianhe Zaobao also interviewed a healthcare expert on advice for staycation guests. They are suggested to designate one person to do the hotel check in and check out, to open the windows the first time they step into the hotel room, to utilize contactless payment and to have a shower first after returning from outside.
In the opinion of Li Liangyi, the local four-star and above hotels charge above 200 SG dollars (146 U.S. dollars) per night on average, and if the government is going to hand out Singaporeans vouchers to spend at local hotels, more Singaporeans would resort to staycation there.
However, as the government currently limits gatherings with no more than five people, such kinds of staycation will be dominated by family visits.
Analysts point out that if the 320 million vouchers are fully spent domestically, it could only maintain the minimum operation of the local tourism industries, which earned an accumulated revenue of 2.76 billion SG dollars (2.03 billion U.S. dollars) last year. Only by wiping out the virus and opening the border to grant entries of short-term visitors from other countries could the industries regain a lasting prosperity. Enditem
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