Qantas’s Kangaroo route to boost Singapore

The Singapore Tourism Board expects more Australians to visit after Qantas reinstates the Kangaroo route.

Singapore Tourism Board CEO Lionel Yeo

The Singapore Tourism Board expects more Australian tourists will visit the Lion City after Qantas reinstates the Kangaroo route between Australia and Britain in March.

Of the 16.4 million international holiday-makers and business visitors Singapore draws annually, Australians account for more than a million, making up the island state’s fifth-largest source market — after Chinese, Malaysian, Indonesian and Indian tourists.

Qantas will add additional services to Singapore of more than 3000 seats a week from March, shifting its capacity to the fast-growing Asia market with an estimated annualised net benefit to the airline of more than $80 million from the 2019 financial year.

The Singapore Tourism Board is pleased with the plan to divert all Qantas services from the Middle Eastern hub of Dubai to Singapore.

“We feel there is more potential for growth from the Australian market, especially with Qantas restarting Changi as a stopover (for the Britain-Europe route) from next March,” said Lionel Yeo, chief executive of the Singapore Tourism Board.

“With the resumption of Singapore as a hub it means we will attract more traffic from Australia.”

Qantas said its decision to operate QF1 and QF2 via Singapore would provide customers with more choice as well as maximising new technology and responding to the growing numbers of customers travelling to Australia and Europe from Asia, which is where the carrier is seeing some of the strongest demand on its network.

“We now fly to Singapore from four Australian cities — providing many options for customers across the country to connect to our new service from Singapore to London,” a Qantas spokesman told The Australian.

At present, Australians stay an average 3.1 to 3.2 days in Singapore, slightly down on the average international stay of 3.5 days. However, Australians spend more than other nationalities, averaging $S1140 ($1094) per visit, slightly up on the international average spend of $S1000.

Singapore is also benefiting from interest in leisure cruising, with Mr Yeo saying the cruise penetration for the island state had been extremely successful.

“For us we have the berth capacity that we require at the moment, but we anticipate that we will have to invest in more cruise infrastructure,” he said.

Mr Yeo said the additional significant expenditure in cruise infrastructure would occur within five to 10 years.