Our image?
What is it that we want our tourists go home with? Other than the souveniers they can buy? what kind of experience do we want them to well.........experience? that is THE question that Singapore has been tryin to answer for some time. We ourselves cannot find the one thing that we want visitors to experience...i am from the tourism industry and yet i question...Being a Singaporean it is easy for us to say that Singapore is boring....but are we? Many of the tour guides i have spoken too said that "Singapore is not boring....YOU are!!"...and it is true. How can we the citizens of Singapore sell our country if we can't sell it to ourselves? Singapore has many things to do and places we can go. But how much of it has changed since 5 yrs ago? Many of the attractions start big but die off within 2 to 10 yrs coz 'its too boring'. How many attractions can be named? Fantasy Island, Haw Par Villa and right now Wild Wild Wet. These attractions can be and could have pulled in many visitors, both local and foreign.
Look at Dubai and Hong Kong, they keep re-inventing themselves. With new rides, new attractions, MODIFYED attractions, new slogans and many more. How many time have we seen Fantasy Island modifyed with new rides and new attractions? Look at Disney Land all over the world...they build new rides and add in many things as the years pass. So visitors can look forward to something new every time they go there. Why can't Singapore (since we do have so many good models to copy) do the same? We start OH SO BIG and within a few years it goes down the drain! Since there have been so many so-called 'faliures' why and how will the IR survive? Yes, i hope it will coz my future depends on the IR, but is the hype all too much? The casino seemed to me to be the MAIN attraction, and not the parks and rides and entertainment thats gonna be there.
Does this all mean that we bask in our excellence too juch that we seem not to realise the mistakes that we are commiting?
The many old buildings that are being demolished to make way for new and technoligically advanced buildings. Will we lose the lusture of our heritage and who we are? Will more technology and new buildings draw visitors to Singapore? NO! They can get that in their own countries! We need to show our heritage, our past and draw the visitors in. Dangle the carrot that no one else is dangling. Sell what others do not have, what we can call our own. What do we have to call our own?
1)The pre-war shop houses
2)Boat Quay/Clark Quay
3)The old national library (which was demolished brutally!!!)
4)The unknown temples and places of worship
5)OLD OLD houses
the list will go on....(no time now to continue thinking!) but you get my point!! There are many more things to sell in Singapore, other than the Merlion, Sentosa, food,Zoo,Bird Park and Night Safari. We can sell our not-so-made-up-heritage, THE REAL DEAL!!, the night life (which can be improved upon), the true Chinese, Malay and Indian way of life and many many more....
i truly hope that i can make changes to the future of tourism! i mean thats y i studied in TP, Tourism Mgt right? hahaha...
posted by ponga @ 7:50 AM
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