Hong Kong's exchange rate regime:: Lessons from Singapore

Singapore's managed floating exchange rate regime contrasts with Hong Kong's currency board system featured by the Hong Kong–United States dollars peg. This paper appraises the two different exchange rate regimes by comparing their track records in maintaining macroeconomic stability and trade competitiveness in the 1990s. A review of the two regimes' institutional characteristics and macroeconomic performance reveals the systemic inadequacy of Hong Kong's exchange rate regime under a changing global financial environment. As East Asia emerges from the recent financial crisis, Singapore's experience of successfully moving away from a currency board system to a credible managed floating regime offers a lesson worthy of attention from Hong Kong.     

Planning,Changing Landscapes and Tourism in Singapore

The paper discusses approaches to certain forms of official planning, the values which underpin them and implications for tourism, with particular reference to Singapore and its natural and cultural resources. Government efforts to mould nature and culture through planning, in accordance with visions of its preferred states, are reviewed and some concerns about the extent of interference and the results are revealed. The landscapes created may be excessively ordered and lacking in spontaneity, with doubts about authenticity, features that adversely affect their sustainability as visitor attractions. Insights are thus afforded into underlying imperatives and the linkages which connect planning, environmental and social policies, political ideologies, and tourism in relatively newly independent states and more widely.     

Destination Development

Abstract

This paper discusses tourism in Singapore, and Dubai, both relatively small and wealthy territories which have achieved considerable success in attracting international visitors. Tourism resources and policies are compared to reveal similarities and differences in their attractions bases and infrastructures. There is also evidence of a common commitment to growth and a willingness to intervene and invest on the part of governments. Application of the life cycle model, however, suggests that they are at contrasting stages in the development process. Singapore is attempting to avert stagnation while Dubai is growing at a fairly rapid pace. These positions pose particular challenges and the future evolution of the states as tourist destinations is uncertain, despite official efforts to shape it.     

Assessing macro environment trends in Singapore: Implications for tourism marketers

The growth in the number of Singaporeans traveling overseas has been quite remarkable. In 1994, Singaporeans made over 2.4 million overseas trips. This was made possible by the increased affluence of the population, after several decades of continued economic development. At the same time, there are changes in the demographic and psychographic composition of the population which attracted the attention of tourism marketers not only locally and abroad. This paper attempts to examine these changes and discuss their implications. Several types of new tours are suggested for a tourism industry that must innovate and upgrade their products and services to meet the demands of a new breed of consumers.     

Tourist attractions in Bangkok and Singapore; linking vandalism and setting characteristics

The study adopts an exacting observational approach to vandalism and its site determinants in two pivotal Asian cities, Bangkok and Singapore. The study served three goals: to develop and evaluate an observational approach to auditing the damage to tourist attractions; to link the setting characteristics to the indicators of damage; and to explore the applicability of Western constructs of vandalism and control to these Asian settings. A cluster analysis identified five kinds of sites which differed systematically in levels of disrepair and the factors influencing that damage. Sites with higher and lower levels of vandalism appeared in both cities. Powerful factors limiting damage were identified. The western site determinants for vandalism applied to the Asian settings.     

论新加坡学校德育的儒家思想底色

新加坡学校德育以科学化、本土化、现代化和社会化的儒家思想为指导,确定学校德育的教学目标,课程设置和教学内容。用儒家思想整合多元化的社会价值观,抵御西方腐朽价值观的侵蚀,完善学校、家庭、社会三维一体的德育网络。探究新加坡学校德育的儒家思想底色,寻求我国学校德育改革的新思路。     

新加坡社区医疗卫生服务的经验及其启示

新加坡推行的政府主导的社区发展模式和丰富的社区医疗服务使其成为世界上社区建设和治理最为成功的国家之一。新加坡为社区居民提供的医疗卫生服务主要包括政策参与、医疗诊治、宣传教育、环境维护四个方面。借鉴新加坡社区医疗卫生服务的成功经验,改善我国社区医疗卫生服务应构建"四位一体"的医疗卫生机构服务体系、以社区首诊制度为开端、合理配置社区医疗卫生资源、善于借助社会力量等。     

Does a reward program affect customers’ behavioural intention of visiting the airport? A case study of Singapore Changi Airport

An understanding of the behavioural intentions of customers in visiting airports may help airport management to boost airport retail revenue (i.e. non-aeronautical revenue) by increasing customer spending at the airports. This study aims to examine the connection between airport reward programs and customers' behavioural intentions of visiting the airport, attempting to bring some benefits and credits for implementing reward programs in the airport sector by using Singapore Changi Airport as a case study. Two types of customer behavioural intentions (i.e. time spent at the airport and various purposes of visiting the airport) were investigated in the study to examine the effects of Changi Airport's reward program (i.e. Changi Rewards). An on-line survey was conducted, and the participants' responses were analysed via a structural equation modelling approach. The results showed that the attractive benefits of Changi Rewards could have a positive influence on arousing customers' intentions to engage with the programme. In addition, customers' intentions to engage with the programme can have a positive effect on increasing passengers' time spent at the airport and inducing customers to visit the airport for leisure purposes. Managerial implications to the airport sector are discussed.     

Corporate Real Estate and Stock Market Performance

An interesting question in corporate real estate literature is whether real estate can improve the stock market performance of property-intensive non-real estate firms. Using a data set comprising 75 non-real estate corporations that own at least 20 percent properties, this paper empirically assesses and compares the pair-wise return, total risk, systematic risk and Jensen abnormal return performance of composite (with real estate) and hypothetical business (without real estate) firms. We employed Morgan Stanley Capital International world equity index instead of a local market index to provide some insights into the performance of the local market relative to the global market during the 1997–2001 volatile periods experienced by many Asian countries. Our results suggest the inclusion of real estate in a corporate portfolio appears to be associated with lower return, higher total risk, higher systematic risk and poorer abnormal return performance. It is therefore likely that non-real estate firms own properties for other reasons in addition to seeking improvement in their stock market performance. Further research is needed to explore the main factors contributing to corporate real estate ownership by non-real estate firms.     

Forecasting tourism: a combined approach

In this article, we employ a combined seasonal nonseasonal ARIMA and sine wave nonlinear regression forecast model to predict international tourism arrivals, as represented by the number of world-wide visitors to Singapore. Compared with a similar study of the accuracy of international tourist arrivals forecasts by Chan (Journal of Travel Research, 1993, 31, 58–60)¹ and Chu (Journal of Travel Research, 1998, 36, 79–84)² using other univariate time series models, our proposed model has the smallest mean absolute percentage error.