Survey Shows S’pore Residents Are More Willing to Spend on Staycations & Food Delivery

Are you willing to spend more money on getting food delivered or going on a staycation?

Reader Bao: Those are where 95% of my pay go to.

You’re not the only one.

Majority Agrees

On Tuesday (2 December), the findings from a survey conducted by the Singapore Management University’s (SMU) Institute of Service Excellence and the Q3 Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore results for the food and beverage (F&B) and tourism sectors were released.

According to the survey conducted by the SMU’s Institute of Service Excellence, it found that 63 per cent of the participants would maintain or increase the frequency of going on a staycation. On the other hand, 71 per cent of them said they would spend the same amount or more.

The survey had a total of 450 participants.

The cost of staycations and how some hotels had served as quarantine facilities did not deter Singaporeans from going on a “trip”.

Maybe they’ve not heard of cockroach-infested hotel rooms, but anyways.

Meanwhile, the index surveyed more than 2,500 Singaporeans between July and September.

The results revealed that more restaurant customers are choosing to order takeout food more often due to the pandemic.

Customer Loyalty

Mr Chen Yongchang, head of research and consulting at the Institute of Service Excellence, said that this would be beneficial for companies who expanded to include takeout and delivery.

In fact, it was also revealed that customers are more loyal to restaurants when they order food delivery. People who ordered delivery or takeaway were more likely to patronise the restaurant again. The report also found that they would be accepting of any future price changes as well.

How did this crowd fare in terms of points for their loyalty? Customers who ordered food delivery scored 73.8 points and those who ordered takeaway scored 73.1 points.

However, this is not the case for restaurant diners. They had only scored 68.9 points.

Hotels could not be surveyed for the report this year due to the lack of tourists. Alternatively, researchers chose to feature attractions such as Universal Studios Singapore, Gardens By The Bay and the Singapore Zoo.

The report found that factors such as F&B options and the range of activities offered were important in a customer’s loyalty to visiting an attraction.

Staycation Craze 

Singaporeans being crazy about going on staycations should not surprise you as it has been the trend for quite a while, and with COVID-19, it only serves to amplify this trend.

In 2018, an Expedia survey found that 64 per cent of Singaporeans went on staycations that year. They averaged 2.4 staycations annually. There was even an increase in demand for staycations, from 25 per cent in 2016 to 40 per cent in 2017.

For Singaporeans aged between 30 and 39, the survey found that half of them would take a staycation for the weekend. It also found that 8 per cent of them would stay for five nights and above.

For parents with children, they were likely to go on one during the school holidays.

What’s the appeal of a staycation? The study found that top reasons for going on a staycation included having a short getaway as well as the price point.

Since reopening hotels in July, hotels have seen a surge of bookings. Within the first week of reopening, some of them had already reported fully booked weekends and up to 80 per cent occupancy.

With the redemptions of tourism vouchers, perhaps we will see even more Singaporeans going on staycations.

Read more about the vouchers here.

Featured Image: Christian Heinz / Shutterstock.com