"Don't rely on tired formula"
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Don't rely on tired formula'
The New Paper
3 March 2005
East Coast GRC's Mr Tan Soo Khoon again stirred the hornet's nest.
Think last year's 8.3 million tourist arrivals and $9.6 billion in tourism receipts is worth shouting about?
Think again, he says.
The tourism sector's contribution to GDP has actually fallen by half from 6 per cent in 1993 to the current 3 per cent.
Mr Tan's call?
Don't ape what others do. Come up with original ideas. Capitalise on our unique strengths.
And he added that relying 'on the same tried and tired formula by simply repackaging it under a new slogan' won't work
Already, he argued, Singapore's had two golden opportunities snatched away by its regional competitors.
One, we lost the Formula One Grand Prix event to Malaysia.
Result: They get an estimated RM$1 billion ($428m) injection into their economy each year.
Two, we lost the Disneyland 'super theme park' to Hong Kong.
The result: Millions of extra tourists, thousands of extra jobs headed Hong Kong's way.
What we're left with, he says, is 'neither-here-nor-there' attractions like Haw Par Villa, and Sentosa's 'artificial beaches'.
Oh, and as he puts it, 'one ageing musical fountain'.
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We lost ground and they are trying to get in another half-f8cked casino which will eventually be neither here nor there. -
its ok...can try out the casino and theme park at a moderate scale...if it responds well, then can expand it wat...rite?
another point is about this banning of smoking everywhere...what if the tourists are smokers? then they cannot smoke here, cannot smoke there....then no place to go and let off (steam)....so might as well dun come????
i myself is a non-smoker, but i think they never think of the whole problem thoroughly.
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If we had our own mining of prosperous fisheries industries we can throw the casino idea out the window. But we don't, what we have is a 1970's concept that turned singapore into a tourism mecca upto 1990's. But now many of our regional neighbours like china, vietnam, cambodia and elsewhere have opened up econommies, being new to capitalism they have adopted this concept much to our demise.
dats why casino idea is important my shortsighted singapore countrymen tourism is one of our main domestic backbone industries, we lose this industry the hotels, shopping centers and the industries that support it will be dust.
the whole idea is re-invent ourselves and rebuild our lost fortunes in tourism.
I'm all for the idea of a casino and others, even moral or unmoral as long as it brings in tourist $$$. -
me support KumSioJui...
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casino sucks. singapore is gd in that it is able to prosper without many of the social ills that often plague other countires. casino will cause more probs only.
but i agree that tourism is really needed. so a casino shld be built just for tourism only. singaporeans shld be completely banned from it. -
In the end, having a casino without an entire revamp of the tourism industry will not be much effective and instead pose as a sword of Damocles.We need to buld up a reptutation of not being a cheapo place, but a place of culture and heritage, and that will lessen the chances of riff-raff coming here.