The 40 million dollar question

The Singapore Tourism Board spent 40 million dollars on the premier shopping street in the country, and 40 million dollars later, Orchard road is… still the same. Apart from a colony of glass panels, more flower totems and more bushes children pluck orchids from, yes, Orchard Road is still quite the same. In what is most probably the worst decision taken the tourism board, millions have been spent on the physical change almost no one have noticed. I think indeed, this money was quite grossly mismanaged for the reasons I will state below.

The reason given by the STB for spending this mammoth sum of money is that the money has been spent to 'beautify the area'. This would apparently woo tourists to splurge their money in the various shops in the street. This is a great idea, because tourists would indeed come to beautiful places in bigger crowds to splurge their money and give the country's economy much needed revenue. But there is a problem with that reason. Very few people noticed the beautification results. 40% of the people Straits time polled did not notice the final result. Comments such as "I hardly even noticed the difference" were as common as the dead leaves in Orchard road in that survey. STB's rationale for going ahead and spending the money was a good one, but unfortunately, this process has evidently not yielded results that have made any visible results.

There are several reasons why such a huge sum of money should not have been spent the way it was by the STB, and several problems it caused to Orchard Road instead of boosting and beautifying the street.

The first reason is that in the light of the current economic crisis, the number of tourists coming to the country has taken a nosedive. Spending 40million dollars on Orchard road to woo people who would are not even in the country is simply illogical. Instead, the money could have been spent in other areas of tourism, such as advertising Singapore to countries where most of the tourists come from. 40 million dollars would be more than enough to promote Singapore to people in foreign countries and entice them to visit the country. When we have the statistics that tourists are coming to the country, then we can think about beautifying the premier shopping district to woo them to encourage them to spend their money.

The second reason is that the implementation process of this mammoth makeover did more harm than good to the premier district. Because of the construction works in the street, works that installed flower totems and the co-ordinated street furniture, many customers were peeved. One visitor, Mrs Jackie Stevens, said "We thought Orchard Road would be prettier and nicer, because we saw it in the travel books. I didn't know there was going to be so much noise and construction." In times were every single tourist is important, it seems as if the facelift has already done more harm than good. In addition to being the greatest source of irritation to shoppers, the construction had decimated several businesses. Hoardings, put up because of the road works, blinded potential customers to many small businesses ranging from ice-cream to newspaper vendors. As one owner put it, "There used to be a queue of people at my stall. But now, people at Tangs cannot see my stall, and there doesn't seem to be many people coming." If this facelift has to net in profits and benefits, it will first have to reverse these nearly-irreversible losses.

The biggest reason would be that 40 million dollars in making changes to things shopping crowds hardly ever notice is a completely asinine way of spending money. The only result people did notice in the Straits Times survey was the mushrooming of glass panels with lamps that change colour attached underneath. No one noticed the more 'co-ordinated' furniture. No one did as much as cast a glance at the new flower totems. And the newly planted orchid bushes? Children continued plucking the flowers. This money should have instead been spent on more noticeable and helpful things. For example, something about the traffic could have been done, something that is a nagging problem not only to the STB, but to everyone who frequents Orchard Road, and that includes the all important tourists. In addition to that, shoppers cannot get from one side of the road to the other malls, as traffic lights, underpasses and overhead bridges are few and widely spaced apart. Bridges could have been built at closer intervals to help these shopaholics get to the other side. If beautification was indeed the primary goal, the money could have been spent devising a more comprehensive cleaning strategy that would get rid of the biggest appearance problem- the brown dead leaves strewn across the footpaths and roads. The changes listed above are noticeable and would actually help the current bunch of shoppers and improve their shopping experience, and that is what will make them come back. Flower totems and co-ordinated street furniture would not.