Singapore's tourism authority on Tuesday projected tourist arrivals to the city-state to recover to pre-pandemic levels by next year.
The Singapore Tourism Board said international visitor arrivals in 2022 reached 6.3 million, about a third of the pre-pandemic level.
The top places visitors came from were Indonesia, India and Malaysia.
The authority is projecting that visitor arrivals will hit 12 million to 14 million this year, bringing in S$18 billion ($13.6 billion) to S$21 billion in tourism receipts, still below 2019 levels.
On the return of visitors from mainland China, which used to be Singapore's top tourist market before the COVID-19 pandemic, Keith Tan, chief executive of the Singapore Tourism Board, told a news conference, "We are hoping to get for the whole year of 2023 between 30 to 60 percent of where we were compared to whole year of 2019."
"We will not get there in March or April 2023. But hopefully, things go well in our most ambitious and aggressive scenarios," he added.
