Lucknow - Singapore is tapping tourist traffic from non-metro cities like Lucknow that is emerging as a 'key outbound tourist market' among major Indian cities.
India is the fifth largest tourist market for Singapore, with as many as 583,000 tourist arrivals in 2005.
And Lucknow, the capital of India's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, has witnessed a 77 percent rise in the number of tourists going to Singapore over the past two years, according to a survey by the Singapore Tourism Board.

'It was this amazing growth in the tourist traffic that led us to undertake a trip to this city for a closer interaction with tour operators and the media,' Singapore Tourism Board regional director Kenneth Lim told IANS.

'For us, Lucknow has become a key outbound tourist market among major Indian cities.'
'The Singapore government had already drawn up a 30-billion Singapore dollar blueprint to expand tourism activity over the next 10 years,' he said.

According to Lim, 'bold targets were set to triple tourism receipts to 30 billion Singapore dollars, double visitor arrivals to 17 million and increase tourism-related jobs to 100,000 by 2015'.

During his meeting with tour operators here, Lim talked about creating a two billion Singapore dollar Tourism Development Fund to speed up tourism initiatives.

In 2005, tiny Singapore, with a population of just four million, received 8.94 million visitors, registering 7.3 percent growth over the same period a year ago. At least 50 percent of these were arrivals from Indonesia, China, Australia, Japan and India that formed Singapore's top five visitor-generating markets in 2005, said Lim.

The Singapore Tourism Board has set up a new office in Mumbai, in addition to the one in New Delhi.

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