Demand from Chinese travellers has spiked - even doubling for Golden Week - and is going strong till the end of the year. SINGAPORE - On the first day of China’s Golden Week holiday on Oct 1, Singapore’s Merlion Park was teeming with tourists hoping to snag a perfect vacation snap. While many conversations were in Bahasa Indonesia, Tagalog and French, it was a variety of Chinese dialects that rose above the chatter.
“We wanted to come here for the diversity of the people and the food,” said a man from Chengdu who wanted only to be known as Mr Guo. The 32-year-old works in technology and was in Singapore for four days with his partner, a 27-year-old accountant who called herself Ms Fu. “It’s a short flight away, and it helps that people here speak the language too,” he said, adding that Singapore had piqued their interest after seeing information about it online.
The couple are among a growing number of Chinese tourists who have chosen Singapore as a holiday destination during Golden Week, which runs from Oct 1 to Oct 7. In August 2024, the Republic saw 403,120 visitors from China. This was more than the combined total of less than 339,000 visitors from the next three source countries - Indonesia, India and Australia.
This comes nearly eight months after a mutual visa-free arrangement began on Feb 9, allowing citizens of Singapore and China to enter each other’s countries without a visa, for a stay of up to 30 days. Local tour operators and travel platforms als.
