On Tuesday, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) cemented two strategic partnerships with Alibaba Group and Traveloka at the Tourism Industry Conference held in the city-state. The deals will help STB develop a digital strategy to bolster Singapore’s tourist numbers and engage visitors in new ways.
One deal will see Alibaba’s key business units—including the online travel platform Fliggy, Alipay, video-streaming service Youku, ticketing platform Damai, and Alibaba Cloud—working with STB to generate insights on travelers’ consumption behaviors in Singapore. The three-year agreement serves as a follow-up to an existing pact that the two entities formulated in 2017.
STB will also tap Traveloka’s data on Southeast Asian travelers. Under the terms of the two parties’ memorandum of understanding, the online travel agency will promote Singapore as a tourism destination in five countries—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Singapore’s tourism industry is experiencing healthy growth, and posted a 6.2% year-on-year bump in visitor numbers for 2018. Chinese, Indonesian, and Indian nationals accounted for most of the visitors to Singapore last year. Specifically, the number of Chinese tourists grew by 6% to 3.42 million last year, while more than 3 million Indonesian nationals and 1.44 million Indian tourists visited the city-state. Private partnerships have also been formed to take advantage of Singapore’s status as a tourist destination, such as Chope’s tie-in with Meituan to seat Chinese diners in Singapore’s restaurants.