SINGAPORE -- The tourists number from China to Singapore saw a double-digit growth during the first three quarters last year, with registered visitor arrivals of 1.5 million, up 23 percent on year, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) said on Wednesday.

The board said this was mainly due to an increase from secondary market like Zhejiang's Hangzhou city and Hubei's Wuhan city.

Growth in Chinese arrivals was also boosted by an increase in twinning traffic with Malaysia, which represents 57 percent of the overall Chinese arrivals in January-September last year.

During the period from January to September last year, the tourism receipts from China also posted a growth of 18 percent to a record 1.86 billion Singapore dollars ($1.5 billion).

Another main tourism market is Japan, which had visitor arrivals to Singapore of 554,000 during the first three quarter in 2012, an annual growth of 17 percent. It was the third consecutive year of double-digit growth since the opening of the integrated resorts in 2010.

They spent 700 million Singapore dollars during the same period, up 20 percent on year.

According to the board's preliminary estimates, tourists totally spent 23 million Singapore dollars last year, slightly up 3 percent, while the international visitor arrivals was 14.4 million, a growth of 9 percent.

As for this year, the STB forecasted the total tourism receipts of 23.5 billion to 24.5 billion Singapore dollars with visitor arrivals of 14.8 million to 15.5 million.