Organisers of events taking place in Singapore’s Marina Bay precinct have taken to strategic partnerships in hopes that their complementary offerings could boost visitor numbers.
Artbox Singapore and the DBS Marina Regatta have synchronised their calendars and are now running concurrently on two consecutive weekends – May 25-27 and June 1-3 – in hopes of drawing more visitors to the precinct, said Leonard Tan, senior vice president, group strategic marketing & communications, DBS.
DBS, which has been a sponsor of Artbox since its debut last year, has this year extended its annual Marina Regatta for another weekend to compliment its partner, shared Tan.
He elaborated: “This area was an opportunity. Artbox has a good mix of foreign and local vendors, and the DBS Marina Regatta attracts overseas racing teams as well. We’ve got 98 teams this year. It’s a good mix to activate the entire Marina Bay and make this a vibrant place, and this helps to beef up our appeal in the region.”
Last year’s single-weekend regatta garnered more than 40,000 attendees, and this year’s is expected to bring in even more in conjunction with the crowd from Artbox, said Tan.
Artbox is an outdoor food and retail concept brought in from Thailand by local organiser Invade. Last year’s event saw 600,000 attendees, 14 per cent of which were tourists.
This year, Artbox has expanded its fairground space by 280 per cent to 1.3ha and expects to attract 700,000 guests.
Lee Haoming, co-founder of Artbox Singapore and head, strategy of Invade, said: “The bulk of our visitors are 20-35 years old, but we are surprised to see that a lot of families came by as well. So this year, we created more games for the kids to make it more wholesome and family-friendly.”
He added: “We’ve got a lot of vendors from Malaysia and Indonesia signing up as well. It’s no longer just Thai and Singaporean vendors. We want to create a platform for different entrepreneurs and designers in the Asia region to showcase what they have and exchange cultural creativity.”
Lee told TTG Asia that the event will be brought to a regional scale. Artbox Kuala Lumpur is almost confirmed for November, and other countries such as Taiwan and Indonesia are being discussed.
