The Big Read: Singapore goes all in with F1 - will it pay off for a desperate tourism sector?

SINGAPORE: For over a decade until 2020, Madam Bai Hong Mei and her colleagues at May Tailor would go into overdrive for a week in September every year, cutting, sewing and hemming formal clothing for attendees of the annual Formula One (F1) race here.

Her phone would ring constantly with orders, and her calendar would be pencilled with tight deadlines to meet her customers’ demands. Receipts would surge by at least 20 per cent in that entire week, thanks to the shopping sprees by foreign visitors who descended in Singapore for business and pleasure, and of course, the F1 race itself.

“The amount of work is mind-boggling. Tourists need suits and dresses, and fashion outlets would refer them to us for their tailoring needs. The race has turbocharged all of our businesses,” said Mdm Bai in Mandarin. 

The former Hugo Boss tailor founded her alterations business 16 years ago and runs several outlets around the area, including one at the Marina Bay Sands hotel.

But the past two years of the pandemic had put a damper on the brisk business Mdm Bai once enjoyed. The Singapore Grand Prix (SGP), which last hosted around 268,000 spectators in 2019 around the Marina Bay street circuit, was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the raging COVID-19.

Now, the ritzy spectacle of F1 night racing is set to return to Singapore in September this year, ending its two-year absence from the F1 calendar. Race organisers and the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) announced on Jan 27 that they had signed a seven-year contract to host F1, the longest contract renewal so far.

The news has brought a buzz to hospitality and tourism businesses, as well as to retailers and service providers such as May Tailor which stand to benefit from spillover effects that are not