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Lynette Pang opens by explaining that Singapore is all about passion made possible, the brand's strapline. With such a legacy as an organisation, even now during these challenging times, they continue to work hard to ensure top-quality offering.

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Singapore lost more than 100 city links in air services. They have also experienced a drop of 79.2% in international visitor arrivals and a 277,700-arrival-drop in commercial air traffic.

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Addressing safety concerns, STB has been working closely with other government departments to roll-out SG Clean campaigns, with an SG Clean quality market which certifies businesses only if they meet stringent health and safety standards. This is about allowing businesses in Singapore to re-open and start events once again safely, with pilots planned for events and upcoming trade shows.

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Another initiative is the Tourism Recovery Action Task Force (TRAC), which is about driving and implementing different measures. It's also about identifying and building opportunities and capabilities as well as rallying stakeholders and driving innovation through co-creation.

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As Singapore works towards the recovery of tourism businesses, their very own consumers started to develop a new set of norms. Driving from one end of Singapore to the other takes less than an hour, but their task was to convince locals that there were many things to see and discover in their own city, with the biggest campaign to date to drive local tourism.

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"Local tourism won't replace the revenue lost from international visitors, but it can help businesses to get through this period."

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An initiative called 'Singapore Re-discovers' focuses on partner communities, to create experiences, to help locals discover hidden gems and it offers a partnership with tourism and leisure to help drive new leisure business from the local market.

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Lynette explains more about the Partnership Framework, designed to drive brand equity and power innovation. To support this, STB has inspired the role the industry plays to create new services and products. A great example of this is the Virtual Singapore Food Festival, which featured live masterclasses of home-grown culinary talent, with things like food bundles to create a more engaging watch-from-home experience.

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They also launched a three-day virtual rave, with a partnership with Zouk Phuturescopes, with a line up of local and international DJs and a global audience of more than 7,000 people.

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To support creativity, STB has created an SG Stories Content fund which is seeing incredible and inspiring new content about Singapore being created, which keeps Singapore top of mind even whilst the world cannot travel.

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Partnerships are also key and more important than ever right now. Lynette explains that data partnership with key partners like Visa, Mastercard, Look Expedia help them to understand what is happening, get a detailed understanding of what's happening and then act on it.

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Virtual tourism has also been a major trend and the team at STB have been able to rapidly roll-out partnerships with major players like Airbnb, as they pivoted towards virtual experiences, so that people at home could still enjoy Singapore.

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Another initiative coming out of the pandemic is the Tourism Development Fund, which focuses on the creation of tourism products, supporting lifestyle and tourism businesses through financial intervention and also driving productivity and development through co-creation and innovation.

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To emerge from this pandemic stronger than before, tourism partners need to be better marketers and more tech-savvy. STB has been building tools and resources for the industry, such as with the Tech College, which is designed to develop tools to help the industry build and grow their knowledge. The Marketing College is all about learning from case studies, online toolkits and free online webinars led by online marketing players to foster knowledge and learning of best practices.

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There are also new tools - STAN, the Singapore Tourism Analytics Network helps stakeholders use data and leverage deep insights to drive a better understanding of what consumer behaviours are emerging and react.

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Tourism Information Services Hub has received wide support from the industry, with thousands of businesses worldwide signing up to the platform.

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We're really excited to learn about Three House, a dedicated co-innovation space for the tourism industry to test new ideas, develop quality solutions and pilot them with tourism industry plays through the Tourism Industry Accelerator Programme. There are already 21 pilot initiatives, with a new round coming soon focusing on current industry challenges.

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The three key takeaways that Lynette shares with us? Maintain agility, Stay true and stay through.