Special Feature: Great Singapore Sale

Tourism shopping key to meeting tourism targets

Events such as the Singapore Fashion Festival and the Great Singapore Sale (GSS) are integral to helping Singapore meet its tourism targets of 17 million visitor arrivals and S$30 billion tourism receipts by 2015.

“STB’s mission is to bolster Singapore’s position as a must-visit shopping lifestyle destination, which also offers excellent dining and a vibrant world-class entertainment and nightlife scene,” said Ms Joycelyn Ng, Deputy Director, Leisure Marketing And Events Management, Singapore Tourism Board. “These events are critical to supporting that positioning and in encouraging visitor spend.”

For example, not only has the Singapore Fashion Festival developed into a regional consumer-focused and retail- driven event, it also serves as a platform for international and regional labels considering a retail presence in Singapore to test bed and launch their products. FF also supports talented local designers with a record of three local designers staging their own solo shows in 2006.
 
This year’s GSS (26 May – 23 July 2006) is no less exciting and boasts several highlights – more late night shopping over five weekends, a bigger and better ‘Great Singapore Shopping Challenge’ with 17 international teams from 12 countries participating, new product launches at the ‘Singapore Showcase’, island-wide discounts, exclusive tourist privileges, and dream prizes to be given away everyday.

A unique feature of the GSS is that it coincides with two other annual signature events, the Singapore Arts Festival (1-25 June 2006) and the Singapore Food Festival (1-31 July 2006), which bring much colour and excitement for visitors to Singapore during this peak travel period of June and July. 

Another signature shopping event on Singapore’s calendar is the annual Singapore JewelFest (12-22 October 2006). This is a nation-wide consumer jewellery festival which showcased the largest and latest collection of exquisite jewellery from 36 international and Singapore brands at last year’s event.

“With the strong ensemble of renowned international and local jewellery brands showcased each year, Singapore JewelFest is set to reinforce Singapore’s position as the choice shopping destination in the region and strengthen Singapore’s reputation as the destination for the discerning traveller. Jewellery has been consistently ranked as the top 3 items in amount spent by tourists on shopping in Singapore,” said Ms Ng.

Tourism shopping currently accounts for 50% of total expenditure by overseas visitors. In 2004, visitors spent about S$3.1 billion on shopping, of which fashion apparel and accessories accounted for the biggest share (32%).