Backpackers,
Why they're discouraged.
Goh Keng Swee raised the question: How many tourists could tiny Singapore take without paying a price?
Jan 25, 2001

Come Jan 31, budget hotels that cater mainly to backpackers in Bencoolen Street will close down. The authorities don't want so many cheap travellers around.

The reason is this. The number of tourists expected to visit Singapore in 2001 is likely to reach a historical 8 million, a strong spurt that will mean one thing: Visitors will number more than twice its own population.

At this rate of increase, it will reach tourist-saturation over a matter of time. When this happens - as Mr. Goh Keng Swee worried a generation ago - every second person we meet on the street will be a tourist.

Imagine what will happen around Orchard Road and Marina Square when Singapore has 15-20 million tourists a year (assuming we can put up enough rooms and service apartments).

Singaporeans will have to fight for space and service in their own country for taxis, in parks and shops, over theatre or restaurant seats or just walking in the streets.

I think the Bencoolen Street closure and the 8 million mark are related.

Like its neighbours, Singapore wants to be overwhelmed by success in tourism (S$5.2 billion industry) but unlike everyone else it lacks the space to pile up the numbers.

However imaginative the solutions can be - spreading the resorts, Batam, Sentosa, etc or space out promotion periods - the government will have to play the numbers game.

They would have to go after the higher spenders - businessmen and women, professionals, families and people to come for trade fairs, seminars and conferences - and discouraging cheap travellers who come with only a few bucks.

It's a tough unpopular call. Besides, Bencoolen Street, so close to the lower Orchard Road end, is becoming too expensive for budget hotels.

The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) gave one reason for wanting to shut them down - too many complaints of touting, fighting and a lack of cleanliness and safety.

For every day, a hotel there remains open after Jan 31, it is fined S$10,000 a day, a death knell that is working.

With the screw tightening, Singapore will become like other expensive big cities, Paris, Brussels or Tokyo where even the cheapest hotels are too much for the backpackers.

But then who can tell? In this age of business big bangs, Singaporeans may one day be able to rent out their HDB rooms to (the right sort of) budget travellers.

The real problem is not the size of their travellers cheques - but things like drugs and crime.

There's virtue in this idea. It will help to spread travellers around. Unlike the past, many of them are well-educated and talented, people the economy here may like to have.

Who knows, a few may like it enough to stay. At any rate they will help pass word around about this place when they go return home.

And in the process letting our own hard-pressed HDB heartlanders earn a few bucks.
Seah Chiang Nee