Impacts of Major Tourism Investments on International Visitor Arrivals

As the global economy is growing and recovering, the number of international travelers has been increasing. Many benefits could be reaped from the Travel and Tourism (T&T) industry such as tourism receipts and drop in unemployment. Both monetary receipts and employment in the T&T industry for Singapore is predicted to grow in the following years until 2028; this makes the industry a profitable sector to focus on for the government. As Singapore lacks natural resources or landscapes to attract tourists, most of the attractions are artificial. This paper uses data from 2000 to 2017 and aims to determine which of the major tourism investments that have been conducted to increase the accessibility and attractiveness of Singapore significantly draw foreign tourists. Year dummies would be used as the proxies for major tourism investments and are the focus of this study. Other determinants of tourist arrivals such as the origin countries’ population size, income, exchange rate, education, and health are included to ensure the reliability of the models’ coefficients. The fixed effect panel data results suggest that the international visitor arrivals are significantly growing from the year 2011 onwards due to the development in and around the 2 Integrated Resorts which are Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa.