By Lim Wei Chean

Local patronage is something the tourism industry is counting on to ride out the current downturn. The Singapore Flyer, for example, is offering a deal in which two paying adults get to take two children under the age of 12 for free.

Ms Ng Lee Li, a section head at the Tourism Academy @ Sentosa, said that as a strategy to ride out the bad times, appealing to the local market is a sound one.

"The benefit of focusing on locals is its shorter lead time for marketing and planning," she said.

Ms Ng added that the current recession is a good time for local attractions to pull out all the stops for local customers, who are cutting back on non-essential expenses like holidays.

While some attractions have just cottoned on to the importance of local support, others, like Sentosa Luge and Skyride, have always chased the local dollar. Mr Lyndon Thomas, the general manager of Sentosa Luge Company, said the mix of customers it wanted from the start was a 50-50 split between locals and foreigners.

He said tourists come only once, but repeat customers are important to sustain the business. And for that, it has to depend on the locals.

Jewel Box at Mount Faber has also been hit by falling tourist numbers and has fewer group bookings now. But its chief executive officer Susan Teh said its strategy of targeting independent travellers and the local market has cushioned the impact.

She said: "The tourism industry life cycle is really short and our strategic intent is to have constant rejuvenation and innovation."

The Jewel Box, formerly the Cable Car Station, recently underwent a $10 million makeover which took eight months. Ms Teh said now was the time to make investments like this, which will prepare the company to meet the demand for its offerings in F&B outlets and cable-car rides when the market improves by 2010.

One company that is taking the route of training its staff to ride out the tough times is Ducktours. Its spokesman said it will take this time to recruit new staff to expand its capabilities.

Ms Teh said one good thing about the current downturn is that "it will strengthen the way we do things in the future, not to be dependent only on one source of the business, leading to creative thinking and solutions, one of the key criteria that is inadequate in the current tourism sector".

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Nov 17, 2008.

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