The Singapore tourism industry was hit by a speeding bulldozer earlier this year: Sars. Hotel occupancy plummeted virtually overnight from an average of 75 per cent to single digit figures. Veterans of the domestic tourism industry were unanimous: this crisis was the worst that they had encountered in their careers.
Indeed, at the height of the outbreak, tourist arrivals were down as much as 70 per cent.
'I have never seen such a drastic drop. It devastated the industry here,' says Heinrich Grafe, general manager of the Conrad Centennial Singapore. The high-end hotel's occupancy rate plunged to 15 per cent in April and 17.5 per cent in May.
The Conrad, which counts on business travellers for up to 85 per cent of its clientele, was worse hit than other hotels which had contracts to accommodate visiting airline staff. But the Conrad was one of the first to benefit from the rebound, as business travellers heeded the call back to the city ahead of leisure travellers.
By last month, the Conrad's occupancy rate had recovered to 66 per cent, although preliminary estimates from the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) show tourist arrivals in the first 15 days of last month were still down 25 per cent on the same period last year.
'At the height of Sars, many companies had put a travel ban on their employees. Now that the ban has been lifted, we are seeing the pent-up demand of business travel to Singapore,' says Shirley Tan, STB's director of corporate communications.