Singapore Is Making Visas More Accessible To Indian Tourists

Singapore is expanding its hospitality infrastructure and improving visa access as they look to build upon the pre-pandemic number of 1.4 million Indian tourists in 2019. With two offices in Mumbai and Delhi, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) is working on getting seamless and easy visas for Indian tourists, Poh Chi Chuan, executive director of Exhibition and Conference at the STB told PTI. The island state is building infrastructure for tourists and business travellers, such as 9,000 new hotel rooms that are being added to about 72,000 existing rooms.For 2024, the STB has not set a target given “the huge tourism potential of the Indian market," Poh said at a press conference, but the country remains confident on improving visitor numbers above the 1.1 million Indian arrivals in 2023. The press conference was held to announce the inaugural APAC edition of the world-renowned National Retail Federation (NRF) Retail Big Show in Singapore from June 11-13, six months after NRF 2024: Retail’s Big Show in New York City.The APAC edition of NRF is expecting between five per cent to 10 per cent of delegates for its 5,000-participant strong Singapore show in June, said Ryf Quail, managing director of the global retail event that is held annually in New York.Singapore is just not looking at the tourist traffic out of India but also business travellers given that both countries have growing trade and a prospering Indian economy, Poh said.“We also see a lot of opportunities coming up in India in sectors such as pharma, BioMed, IT and FinTech. These are very strong industries for Singapore to increase bilateral trade,” he said, adding that Singapore has large-scale exhibitions and conferences catering to these sectors covering advanced technologies.Industry stalwarts addressing the mega gathering include Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO at the Retailers Association of India, Shireesh Joshi, Chief Business Officer of The Open Network for Digital Commerce, and Mathsy Kutty, APAC Leader, The Climate Pledge at Amazon.(With inputs from PTI).