Part A – Tourism and Hospitality
As Rhodes Espinoza put it, in order to fully comprehend the growth of a tourist destination, comprehending the elements that relate thereby influence the increase of tourist to a certain place. As such, Singapore’s tourism system will be reviewed using the model proposed by Leiper (1995). Three parts of the model are Traveler Generating Regions (TGR), Transit Route Regions (TRR) and Tourist Destination Regions (TDR). Tourism is a major industry in the country, attracting millions of tourists each year. Channel News Asia, for instance, reported that in 2007 Singapore has a total of 10.3 million visitors. The new high visitor arrivals in the country are perceived to be because of Singapore’s positive economic growth and rising disposable incomes coupled with well-designed strategic advertising and tactical promotions. Basic tourists drawer include: shopping, arts and entertainment, island resorts, nature sight-seeing, dining, night-life, tourists events, language, accommodation and transportation.
Singapore’s tourism
Tourism statistics report of 2006 revealed that the year was indeed a record-breaking year for Singapore’s tourism sector where tourism receipts and visitor arrivals both achieved an all time high; the former with .4 billion (+14%) and the latter with 9.8 million (+9%). Figures also showed that the total visitors day amounted to 33 million while the average length of stay remained at 3.38 days. With this said, the increasing positive performance of the hotel industry is expected whereby new records were set for average occupancy rate (+1.4%), average room rate (+20%) and room revenue (+24%). The report also noted that Asia remained to be an important source market for Singapore as it contributes 73% of the total number of visitor arrivals. Moreover, all facilities and services received average ratings ranging from 5.4 to 6.5 out of the maximum rating of 7. However, such rating is lesser than the average point vis-à-vis the previous year by –0.3 points (Annual Report on Tourism Statistics, 2006).
Traveler Generating Regions
In simper terms, TGRs are ‘the places where the trips began and by where people who will later be described or counted as tourists start their journey’ (p. 72). It would be necessary to note that Singapore is a unique city that attracts tourists of varying age and appeals to all generations and interests. Singapore too is a stop over points of long haul flights to various destinations such as Asia or Australia and from Europe or Americas. As such, the tourism within the country is increasing steadily as the number of flights was elevated. There are several airlines which now offer special package deals on stop over holidays in the country. In 2006, the top ten visitor-generating markets are Indonesia, China, Australia, India, Malaysia, United Kingdom, South Korea, USA, Philippines and Japan, which accounts for 51% of the total visitor arrivals. South Korea (+24.9%), China (+20.9) and Philippines (20.7%) are three among the major markets.
Transit Route Regions
Further, TRRs are those ‘intermediate zones where the principal travel activity of tourism occurs, distinct from visit activity in destinations’ (Leiper, 1995, p. 81). It said that TRR’s efficiency could be increased when access is ready for a significant volume of travelers, and also the elements such as travel time, fares and other travel costs. Also belonging in this factors are availability of a carrier and other transport facilities, capacity, frequency of services on public carriers as well as changes in transit, discomfort, reliability, attractions around the way and stopover points. Knowing that a portion of the total expenditure of visitors is devoted to shopping (+13.0%), I can say that the primary activity in Singapore is, of course, shopping. Fashion and accessories accounted for the biggest share with 32% and was also the most popular item (40%), as according to the 2006 report because of the shopping belt in the place located in the Orchard Road district. VivoCity also attracted million of visitors since its 2006 opening (Rahim, 2006).
A Singaporean visit would not be completed without visiting Arts District in the country including Central Arts District, Chinatown Arts Belt, Dempsey and Tanglin, Little India and Riverside. There are also many art museums such as Asian Civilisations Museum and Singapore Art Museum and also theaters that boast for its marvelous architecture. A famous island resort Sentosa as well as the Underwater World aquarium is another major tourist spot in the place. Parks and projects that features natural tropical environment are also inexistence which included Singapore Zoo, Night Safari, Singapore Botanical Garden and Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. Nightspots are also popular in Singapore with Boat Quay and Clarke Quay as the primary locations. Finally, throughout the year, Singapore Tourism Board (STB) organises events to attract more tourists such as Chingay Parade, Singapore Arts Festival, Singapore Garden Festival and Singapore Food Festival.
Tourist Destination Regions
Leiper (1995) also points out that TDRs or the places where a person chooses to stay a while in order to experience some feature or characteristic. In becoming popular, these TDRs must be equipped with provisions for attraction, accessibility, tolerance, security, life support and comfort systems, cost and benefit advantage and information diffusion. Singapore is quite a small country, with one region which is the city itself. Several flows of tourism attracted to Singapore thereby many people are visiting the place as a stop over location. Singapore is also enveloped in the multiple destination area loop, making it a favorite destination especially for young people around Southeast Asia. Singapore then is both a destination to tourists and at the same time a stop over setting, though both aspects provide Singapore immense benefits in terms of total number of visitors.
Positive and negative impacts of tourism in Singapore
Tourism plays a central role in the Singapore economy, and the government has high willingness in employing an intervention strategy whenever a cause threatens the sake of the tourism industry. Ooi Can (2005) argued that aside from the economic benefits there are several other ways that the industry affects Singapore and the Singaporeans. Specifically, the tourism industry gave birth to problems which include traffic and parking, pollution, wear and tear of heritage and price inflation that endangers the purchasing decisions of the local people. As the various aspects of Singapore are increasingly becoming commodified and touristified, the value of local industries are declining such as the handicraft that had witnessed mass trinketization (as cited in Ooi Can, 2005). This is to say that tourism is in a way superficial.
The author also reminded, on the other hand, that the social impact of tourism is not necessarily negative. The issue, however, is that creating a balance between the positive and negative impact of tourism are often perceived with political and ideological underpinnings. Ooi Can (2005) states that the tourist consumption of local politics is often implicit, aiming at attaining tourist trust and confidence with reference to tourism policy. As such, it appears that tourism is important not only for economic development, but also for governments when they want to claim international support for their policies. Antother issue is central on the re-branding of Singapore, referring to STB’s concept of Singapore which is then distributed and embedded on the local and tourists psyche. Striking a balance therefore requires the participation and negotiation among the tourism stakeholders. The more pressing issue is that “Uniquely Singapore” is a response to the manifestation of modernity and Westernization in Singapore (Ooi Can, 2005).
Such stakeholders comprises of residents, industry, cultural institutions, tourism attractions, tourists, politicians, and others. The rationale behind this is to come up with adapting the own version of balanced tourism development. There are specific reasons for this. First is the fact that tourists had become a central figure in the local life and so there is the necessity to relate the host country with the home country. In this process, there will be the sense of ownership and sense of identity and exchange of culture could happen. Second is the fact that the word Singapore has been synonymous to tourism. Celebrating ethnic identities despite the modernised and touristifed Singapore would be possible. Tourism agendas must be therefore embedded on Singaporean culture and tradition. Finally, Singaporeans must be empowered to make choices and be given responsibility to their actions. Likewise, the government should support local businesses.
Managing the impacts of tourism
Sustainable tourism wherein the target is to maximised the benefits of tourism and minimised the negative impacts is a concept that the Singaporean tourism model must engage in. Tourism has physical-ecological, sociocultural and economic political impacts, and the management of these must be sought by the tourism managers. One way to effectively manage the impacts of tourism is through identifying the various forms of tourist expenditure and how they affect the local economy and people. The extent to which tourist expenditure circulates around the local economy affects the livelihood and income of the nationals while also creating employment opportunities and encouraging entrepreneurial activity. Furthermore, the social and cultural impact of tourism could be managed on the basis of continuous monitoring of family relationships, collective lifestyles, safety levels, moral conduct, traditional ceremonies and community organisations, creative expressions, value systems and individual behaviour. Doxey’s Index of Tourist Irritation is a way to find out about the issues. Likewise, intervention strategies are therefore important in managing the impacts and then established guidelines that will govern the conduct of mass tourism (Page, 2007).
Recommendations
What STB could do is to measure tourism in the place. Tourism measurement will enable Singapore to further understand why and how significant it is for Singapore’s economy, particularly in terms of balance of payments. Tourism is an invisible export that generates foreign currency and income. Measuring tourism will also assist the government planners and policymakers to anticipate the type of infrastructure and services that tourism requires. The process also encourages Singapore government, with emphasis on STB, to deliver tourism strategies by means of making decisions about what type of action is needed in developing more tourism businesses and entrepreneur (Page, 2007, p. 15).
Another sure way of managing impacts of tourism is through examining the need for impact research and management. STB could, if possible, established an appropriate baseline against which to measure the existing and future changes induced by tourism. Or better yet, the STB should devise a monitoring and mitigation measures to reduce adverse effects. The visitor management scheme must be also revisisted so that it can be aligned to impact analysis.
Conclusion
Tourism is a major industry an economy booster in Singapore. Year after year, Singapore welcomes millions of arrivals, putting the ciyt-country in the realm of the tourism context in Asia. Major tourism activities involve shopping, arts and entertainment, island resorts, nature sight-seeing, dining, night-life and tourists events, with shopping as the primary activity. Singapore is a typical stop over location. TGRs mostly come from Indonesia, China, Australia, India and Malaysia. As such, Singapore is perceievd to be an important element of the multiple destination area loop.
References
‘Annual Report on Tourism Statistics’ 2006, Singapore Tourism Board, Research and Statistics Department, Planning Division, retrieved on 16 December 2008, from http://app.stb.gov.sg/Data/pages/12/b53b3a3d6ab90ce0268229151c9bde11/annual_report_2006.pdf.
Leiper, N 1995, Tourism Management, TAFE Publications, Collingwood, Victoria.
Ooi Can, S 2005, ‘State-civil society relations and tourism: Singaporeanizing tourists, touristifying Singapore’, SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia.
Page, S 2007, Tourism Management: Managing for Change, Butterworth-Heinemann.
Rahim, F A 2006, ‘Newly opened VivoCity mall attracts nearly a million shoppers’, Channel News Asia.
Rhodes Espinoza, A R n.d., ‘Understanding Tourist Destination Grwoth Through a Systems Approach’.
Part B – Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship could be found in the literature basically describing business processes. In the forefront of commercial is whether entrepreneurship has a unique entrepreneurial function or simply a form of management. The term entrepreneur originated from the French word entreprendre which literally means ‘to undertake’. Within the business context, entrepreneurship means to start a business. In a much simpler sense, entrepreneurship basically means to initiate new commercial enterprises.
On the one hand, it means the dynamic process of creating incremental wealth by individuals who assume the major risks in terms of equity, time and/or career commitment or provide value for some product or service. On the other, entrepreneurship is defined as the process of creating something new with value by devoting the necessary time and effort, assuming the accompanying financial, psychic, and social risks, and receiving the resulting rewards of monetary and personal satisfaction and independence. According to Joseph Schumpeter, define the term with emphasis on innovation such as new products, new production methods, new markets and new forms of organisation.
The first company to be considered is Atlas Sound & Vision Pte Ltd. Simply Atlas, the company is considered to be a sample of entrepreneurship because it is a clear story that tells how a young man revived his family business by means of tuning in to the times. Mr. Michael Tien shared that there are three key success factors of Atlas Sound & Vision: premium products, strong customer focus and good staff. The history of Atlas has its own ups and downs. It started as a record-lending shop called The Record Library in 1962. The owners Mr. and Mrs. Alex Tien opened yet another shop called Atlas Sound shortly after three years. The business grew steadily with gross amounting to .8 million. However, the economic downturn had its toll on the business up to its closure in 1886. That same year as well his son Michael, then 21, opened his own business of retailing audio equipment named Atlas Hi-Fi.
In 2003, Michael saw a niche of providing audio solutions to corporate clients; Atlas penetrated the market including hospitality and institutions. An audio-visual company today, Atlas Sound & Vision is most known for bringing Bose sound systems in the place. I considered this as an entrepreneurship simply because Atlas Sound & Vision is an epitome of a revitalisation process of a mature organisation, an endeavour undertaken to respond to identified opportunity. According to Carland et al (1984) an entrepreneur is characterized principally by innovative behaviour and will employ strategic management practices in the business (cited in Furnham 1999, p. 168). Provided that entrepreneurship also seeks raising capital to build the business, Michael Tien did the same thing when he approached SPRING in 2005 and receive funding help to apply for ISO 9000 certification.
Another entrepreneurship story is that of Seksun Way with Dr. Felix Ong in the foerefront. Seksun Corporation Limited was handed to Dr. Ong in 1982 from a relative, which was then in bad shape. The reputation of Seksun then was small, unknown and with no track record, exacerbated by the fact that the successor, Dr. Ong, knew little about precision engineering. Nevertheless, he was determined to change the direction of the company. What he did was to visit a multinational company with high hopes to make sale. He was made to wait at the reception area of the purchasing manager’s office; ending the day with no negotiations with the manager at all. At one time, he successfully brought back a job only to discover that the machines would not be able to perform the work. What makes Dr. Ong a real entrepreneur is his high spirits and being a risk-taker. As such, Seksun under Dr. Ong was initially broke, but through him also, the company become profitable.
From a personal standpoint, Dr. Ong is an emblem of a true entrepreneur whereby he was able to organise, manage and assume business risks associated with Seksun operations. Schumpeter (1966) one of the pioneers in the study of entrepreneurship believed that an entrepreneur acts as a motivating force that facilitates changes in technology and a driving force behind economic development. Entrepreneurs also have a high need for achievement (McClelland, 1962), and this is what is really present in Dr. Ong. He wanted to be suuceesful despite the needs to beat a great deal of adversities. Dr. Ong, as an entrepreneur, understands that he needs to rake risks that can be handled through his or her own efforts (Miner et al, 1989).
Between the two stories, I consider Atlas Sound & Vision Pte Ltd. as the more plausible example of true entrepreneurship. Atlas exhibits entrepreneurship as the process of creating value inside a company by combining resources to take advantage of an opportunity. Atlas has been also true to the definition of entrepreneurship as the process that takes place in different environments and settings that causes changes in the economic system through innovations brought about by individuals who generate or respond to economic opportunities that create value for these individuals and society.
In sum, entrepreneurship does not only focus on the aspect of business but also on the entrepreneur. Nonetheless, entrepreneurship is an individualistic concept and cannot be generalised although entrepreneurs could adhere into best practices of entrepreneurship. Based on the examples provided, entrepreneurship, despite the debates regarding its legitimacy, is more reactive than proactive. Proactivity, on the other hand, should be present among the entrepreneurs.
Reference:
Carland, J., Hoy, F., Boulton, W. and Garland, J. (1984). Differentiating Entrepreneurs from Small Business Owners: A Conceptualisation. Academy of Management Review, 9, 354-359.
Furnham, A. (1999). Personality at Work: The Role of Individual Differences in the Workplace. London: Routledge.
McClelland, D. (1962). Business Drive and National Achievement. Harvard
Business Review, 40, 99-101.
Miner, J., Smith, N. and Bracker, J. (1989). Role of Entrepreneurial Task Motivation in the Growth of Technologically Innovative Firms. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74, 554-560.
Schumpeter, J. A. (1966). Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper and Row.
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