By Julie Power
After almost three years apart, Linh Dwyer and her family arrived early at Sydney’s international airport on Sunday desperate to clap eyes on her parents flying in on Singapore Airlines’ flight SQ231 with another 158 passengers.
It was the first flight to Sydney from Singapore under a new travel bubble for fully vaccinated Singaporean tourists. It is expected to rekindle a lucrative source of tourism that, pre-pandemic, brought 1.6 million high-spending tourists to Australia each year.
Hiro Xu, 7, holding a balloon and a koala toy given to him by Tourism Australia’s welcoming team greeting travellers flying to Australia from Singapore on Sunday. Credit: Edwina Pickles
Seven-year-old Hiro Xu was also waiting to meet his grandparents, who were travelling to Australia from Indonesia via Singapore. He had only seen them on video for the past two years and couldn’t wait to “play putt-putt golf with grandpa”. Before they arrived, Hiro said his grandparents looked “older” on video than when he visited them.
The flight was the first of two to three flights a day from Singapore that are expected to help revive Australia’s decimated international tourist industry.
Passengers included Australian expatriates, Singaporean citizens on holidays, students and relatives of Australian residents and citizens. It also included travellers who flew in after transiting through Singapore’s Changi Airport, one of the world’s biggest aviation hubs.
Sunday’s flights to Sydney and Melbourne marked the beginning of a major new campaign by Tourism Australia, Yours to Explore, targeting Singapore, the sixth-largest source of visitors before the pandemic struck.
Singaporeans are very valuable tourists: the seventh-highest spenders of all visitors. In 2019, they stayed eight nights on average and spent nearly $3000 a person, according to Tourism Australia.
In a briefing for the travel industry, Tourism Australia’s south-east Asia regional manager Brent Anderson said Singaporeans had high savings rates and a large amount of accumulated annual leave that they hadn’t utilised during the pandemic.
Sunday’s welcome by Tourism Australia surprised some travellers.
“It’s surreal,” said Raelene Burgis, an Australian who lives and works in Singapore, who arrived home for an extended holiday. She’d been back a year ago, but her husband Nicholas Lawrence hadn’t been home for three years. He was looking forward to one thing: “Beer.”
The Dwyer family finally reunintes with Ms Dwyer’s grandparents, Quy and Cu Nguyen who had flown to Australia from Vietnam via Singapore. Credit: Edwina Pickles
The Dwyers may have been among the first to arrive at the airport on Sunday but her parents, Quy and Cu Nguyen, were among the last to make it through customs. By the time they emerged, the party was over, the Tourism Australia welcome band had packed up its guitar and instruments and the employees shouting welcomes had just about run out of puff.
That didn’t matter. There were more than three years worth of smiles, tears and hugs.
They’re back. The first flight bringing Singaporean tourists to Australia under a new travel bubble arrived on Sunday.Credit: Edwina Pickles
Announcing the travel bubble with Singapore earlier this month, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the return of tourists would contribute to a billion-dollar boost for Australia’s tourism industry. “Step by step, everything that we know and love about Australia is inching back to normal.”
Under the arrangements, fully vaccinated Singaporeans travelling from Singapore who present a negative PCR test taken within 72 hours of departure will be allowed to visit.
Visitors are no longer required to quarantine, but NSW Health said visitors must have a COVID-19 PCR test within 24 hours of arriving and also a week later.
NSW Health would be “contacting people who have recently arrived from overseas to remind them of these important obligations”.
Sunday’s flights from Singapore, four in total to Melbourne and Sydney, also included a handful of international students. More than 130,000 international students are expected to return over the next few months.
Although the academic year is nearly over, some students are returning now to do practical work and consult with their advisers. Others are arriving as soon as possible because they are afraid that the borders could close again.
More students are expected to arrive from December 6 on flights chartered by NSW. The first flight will carry about 250 students from more than 15 nations, including Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, South Korea, China and Canada with a second flight to bring in students from South Asia and India also scheduled.
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