SINGAPORE, April 23 (Reuters) - Visitor arrivals in Singapore fell for the 10th straight month, the government said on Thursday, dipping 13.2 percent in March from a year ago as the global recession hurt tourism.
The Singapore Tourism Board said in a statement 790,000 visitors came to the city-state last month compared with 911,000 a year ago. The year-on-year decline in tourist arrivals started in June 2008.
Last month' figure was, however, higher than the 690,000 visitors in February and 772,000 visitors in January.
The fall in visitors comes at a time when Singapore is trying to boost tourism by building two multi-billion-dollar casinos with thousands of hotel rooms and theme parks attached to them.
The largest number of visitors came from Indonesia, China, Malaysia, Australia and Britain, which together accounted for 48 percent of the total.
The agency also said the average hotel room rate in Singapore fell 18.5 percent to S$196 ($130) in March from a year ago, while hotel occupancy fell to 74 percent, down 13.1 percentage point from the same period.
Las Vegas Sands is scheduled to open its Marina Bay Sands casino in Singapore before the end of this year, while Genting International's Resorts World at Sentosa will open sometime next year.
Singapore expects visitor arrivals to fall to between 9 million and 9.5 million in 2009 from 10.1 million last year. ($1=1.507 Singapore Dollar) (Reporting by Nopporn Wong-Anan; Editing by Kevin Lim)