Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

Introduction

1 Good morning and thank you for letting me join you here at Tourism Industry Conference (TIC) 2022.

2 Over the past two difficult years, you, our tourism industry have remained incredibly resilient. You were born to be open, to welcome, to showcase, to connect, to bridge distances. But the pandemic caused you instead, to close, shut your doors, to distance. It went against the very grain of your DNA as tourism practitioners, and what many of us joined the tourism industry to do.

3 Over the past two years, CE STB Keith, myself and colleagues from STB and other agencies, spent days and nights on the ground with you and our tourism family. We did what we could to listen to learn and help, to try to make it easier for you to operationalize the many – sometimes confusing – safety measures. Together with you, we tried to come up with ideas we came up with a series of pivots, vouchers, exits, pilots – more than we can imagine. But we got to know and learn from you, and most of all, we got to be inspired by you.

4 Wherever we went, we witnessed your resilience, grit, determination, and innovation. You did not give up. You were relentless in your engagements with us. You pushed and encouraged us to open the sector. You came up with many ideas to keep our sector going in the midst of the crisis. You tried new things, reimagined the future of travel and then invested in new innovative products and experiences. You transformed your businesses even during the toughest periods of the pandemic. You believed that tourism would recover and worked with us to keep your sales up to catch the winds of recovery. For that, thank you for showing us that way.

5 Tourism is important to Singapore. It is a key pillar in our economy that creates good jobs and opportunities for our people. And our tourism industry puts Singapore on a global map – it enhances our international standing and branding and strengthens opposition as a global Asia node and a vibrant, liveable, and connected hub. We supported our tourism sector during the pandemic because like you, we believe that we will again pursue and achieve our aspirations together. 

6 In addition to $320 million dollars set aside for the SingapoRediscovers vouchers, which aim at driving domestic demand, we also provided more than a billion dollars in support measures for tourism sector over the past two years. We introduced measures to alleviate costs such as rental and licence fee waivers, help our tourism industry upskill and build capabilities, enhance your products and experiences, and then amplify your events together. All the while doing what we can to deal effectively and as best we can with the pandemic, so we can kick start our domestic and international recovery plans.

7 We have thus far emerged from the pandemic with one of the world's lowest fatality rates and one of its highest vaccination and booster rates. Now, with these foundations in place to deal with a pandemic, the measures to support our tourism sector helped our tourism business retain your core capabilities during the pandemic and set you up to catch the wind when global travel resumes. 

8 There were already encouraging signs of recovery in our tourism sector. Towards the end of last year when we launched Vaccinated Travel Lanes, and with strong local demand for tourism offerings. As we now reopen our borders in earnest, we are reminding the world and global visitors who Singapore is, what we are about, and what we have to offer.

Safe and calibrated tourism reopening

9 We have focused our efforts in two fronts. First, many of you will know that we have taken a big step by relaxing protocols for business and leisure events. Many of you worked with us on the MICE pilots last year and that was crucial in helping us pave the way to safely resume larger events like this one. So, all of you played a part.

10 In February and March this year, we announced we would reset our measures and subsequently, further ease our protocols when the local COVID-19 situation stabilised considerably. We have now eased our local community Safe Management Measures, which include:

a. Increasing of permissible group size of 10 persons for mask-off activities; 
b. Optional mask-wearing in outdoor settings;
c. Removing zoning requirements for events; as well as
d. Expanding capacity limit for large events and settings of more than 1000 people to 75%. 

11 When we ease these community measures, it helps to lay the foundations for live with COVID, and return and resume normal activities in the long run. More importantly, it sends a message to the world that we are committed to open and reopen safely. At the same time, we will, and we must take a balanced and sensible approach as we relax our measures so that we can ensure that these events remain safe and seamless for our locals and also our international travellers. 

12 According to STB’s Brand Health Survey in January, Singapore remains the most considered destination for leisure and BTMICE travellers, who are open to travel in the next six months. Singapore is ahead of competing destinations such as Tokyo and Dubai, and with our robust safe events and travel protocols, we are well-positioned to capture tourism growth. 

13 Secondly, we updated our border measures by streamlining health protocols for visitors and expanding travel arrangements with countries and regions to revive tourism and reconnect with the world. Just yesterday, we allowed for virtual pre-departure testing, which is again another feedback that we received from many of you.

• As part of our next phase of border reopening, we replaced Vaccinated Travel Lanes with the Vaccinated Travel Framework. There are no countries on the restricted list at the moment, which means that Singapore, in effect is reopened for quarantine-free travel to all fully vaccinated visitors from around the world.
 
• We also streamlined our border measures to facilitate safe and seamless travel. For instance, 

a. Short-term visitors are no longer required to apply for Vaccinated Travel Pass and are free to take any flight or ferry to enjoy quarantine-free travel on arrival in Singapore. 

b. Travellers are not required to undergo on-arrival testing, and will only need to produce a pre-departure test within two days of departure to Singapore. And I know many of you have also asked us to see whether we can revisit that, and we will, in due time. 

14 In aggregate, these changes send a strong signal to the world that Singapore is ready to reopen our borders safely, and that we are committed to reduce the friction of travelling to Singapore. Now this is a big step for us to reconnect with the world, support international travel recovery, and bolster our status as a vibrant travel hub in the region. We will reclaim our place in the world. 

15 As people reacquaint themselves with international travel, we expect to see stronger tourism demand this year. And this will be a shot in the arm for our tourism sector, and we must be prepared to gear up for higher travel volumes.

Recapturing international travel

16 While it will take a few years for international travel demand to return to pre-pandemic levels, we need to effectively recapture the pent-up travel demand in the immediate term so that we can speed up our tourism recovery – something that we've been talking about over the last two years. This year, we will double down on our efforts for SingapoReimagine – our international recovery campaign to welcome travellers to Singapore to reimagine and discover the fresh and innovative experiences we have to offer the world. Now if you haven't seen STB’s latest SingapoReimagine clip, Keith will show it later. I share it widely on my socials, and many of my connections and followers enjoyed it. I won't spoil it for you, but the clip has won many fans. Singaporeans told me how proud they are to see the many gems that Singapore has to show and offer – our culture, our heritage, our sports, our gardens, our natural environment – the list goes on.

17 We are not one to rest on our laurels; we will never rest on our laurels. We will invest in potential growth areas to make Singapore even more attractive to the world.

18 At last year’s TIC, we shared that sustainability and wellness are two emerging trends that will allow us to capture international travel demand. Since then, we have also actively engaged our tourism industry partners and friends to understand how we can better help you in these new growth areas. So, allow me to share how we will continue to chart the way forward with you and ramp up our efforts on sustainability and urban wellness.

Sustainability as an engine of growth for the tourism industry

19 Our first area of focus is for Singapore to become a sustainable urban destination, to attract a growing segment of conscious travellers. Last year, the government launched the Singapore Green Plan 2030 which sparked a national sustainability movement across many industries to make Singapore a greener and more sustainable city.

20 Many of you are keen to kickstart your sustainability journey and have already started to integrate sustainable practices in your businesses. We will support you in all stages of your journey. To do so, we will launch the Tourism Sustainability Programme (TSP) to provide our tourism businesses with resources that you will find helpful to identify strategic areas as you start and embark on your efforts to expand your sustainability offerings. The TSP will focus on three main areas - 1) capability and growth, 2) innovation, and 3) education and awareness.

a. First, we will support you as you build capability and train your workforce through Training Industry Professionals in Tourism (TIP-iT). You can also use the Business Improvement Fund (BIF) to improve your resource efficiency and help to make yourself more competitive.

b. Second, to encourage innovation, we will support you as you develop and testbed innovative sustainable solutions, through our Singapore Tourism Accelerator. We will build an ecosystem around innovative technology providers and tourism businesses can together develop solutions in areas such as water, waste, energy and carbon emissions management that you can use to scale up across the industry.

c. Lastly, we will continue to share best practices and focus areas to help you to inspire you to consider new opportunities as you advance and you pursue your sustainability goals. This includes our Singapore Hotels Sustainability Roadmap, which STB and the Singapore Hotel Association, launched just last month. The roadmap sets out sustainability targets and strategies on how to reach and achieve these targets. 

21 So please make use of the Tourism Sustainability Programme as you think about how to reduce waste, your environmental footprint, and deliver sustainable experiences to your visitors and customers.

Singapore as an urban wellness haven

22 Our second area of focus is to position Singapore as an urban wellness haven to capture wellness tourism that we expect to flourish post COVID-19. 

23 In 2019 the global wellness tourism market was estimated at over US$720 billion. The pandemic has raised greater awareness about the importance of holistic wellbeing and wellness tourism is expected to grow in the next five years to reach us US$1.1 trillion dollars by 2025. We want to target secondary wellness tourists who seek wellness experiences or healthy options during their travel to Singapore, whether for leisure or business.

24 There are many opportunities for Singapore to curate wellness experiences that built upon our identity as a city in nature and the green spaces that are woven into our urban landscape. We can use tech and our multicultural roots to develop new, innovative, novel wellness products and experiences that can help people to get fitter and healthier, and recharge and rejuvenate their minds.

25 So please join us as we build upon Singapore's destination strengths and build innovative cross-sector between tourism and wellness players to create new exciting experiences for all. 

26 To this end, we will need to drive demand for wellness products, starting with locals. To do so, we will launch the inaugural Wellness Festival Singapore in June. This nationwide festival aims to become an annual calendar peak, where the community, business, and government collaborate to create wellness programmes for everyone.

The Government is committed to supporting the tourism industry’s recovery

27 To further boost tourism development and pledge our commitment to our tourism industry, the government has now earmarked close to half a billion dollars to support tourism recovery in the coming years. We will continue to support and sustain strategic manpower capabilities in our tourism sector, offset business costs, and amplify our international recovery plans.

28 More importantly, we will drive international tourism recovery and help our tourism industry emerge stronger with the reimagined products and services through STB’s grants and schemes.

29 We invite all of you to use all of these tools, grants and schemes to recover and to thrive again.

30 It has been quite a crazy two years for all of us. It really pained me to see my STB colleagues having to spend late evenings, enforcing COVID safety measures, and our tourism sector, our hotels, our tour guides our nightlife establishments, having to play so many unfamiliar roles. But every SHN hotel room that you prepared, every safety measure that you help us to adhere to, undoubtedly saved lives. We speak often of our frontline healthcare workers, who are our heroes in the pandemic, but we also do not forget the massive sacrifices that you, our tourism industry, friends and family and partners have made to get us to where we are today.

31 Don't get me wrong – by no means are we quite out of the woods. But we are stronger. We know how to swim in these rough waters; we have the tools, the muscle memory, and the know-how. Now, we need to exercise our natural instincts, our natural talents, and our natural inclinations to come up with offerings and products to wow the world, and them welcome back to our exciting little island. 

32 I sincerely thank you all for all you have done together with us, and I wish you all a wonderful conference. Thank you.