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There's a new reason Indian tourists are flocking to Singapore

Bloomberg Published on Fri, Jul 28, 2017 / 12:25 PM GMT+8

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(July 28): When Indian architect Rahul Maini and his parents embarked on their first trip abroad in May, Singapore was their destination of choice. But the trio wasn’t going for the hawker food or even the city-state’s casinos -- they were there to get on a ship.

The equatorial island has become a flourishing entry point for Indian cruise-ship passengers, bolstering sales for operators, including Royal Caribbean Cruises and Genting Hong Kong. About 100,000 Indians sailed from Singapore last year, 29%more than in 2015, making India the biggest market for cruises departing from the Southeast Asian nation, according to the Singapore Tourism Board.

“We chose to go on a cruise because we could visit three countries in one short trip,” said Maini, 26, whose four-day cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Voyager of the Seas took in the Malaysian city of Penang and the Thai island of Phuket. The family spent about US$7,700, which Maini said was “expensive, but worth it.”