Visitor arrivals in Singapore rose 24% in February from a year earlier to reach 857,000, the highest ever for the month as the city-state's first casino opened to lure tourists during the Lunar New Year holiday.

Hotel occupancy rose 4.9 percentage points from a year ago to 79.7%, though average room rates in February fell 1.5% from a year earlier to $201, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) said on Friday.

The number of “visitor days” - the overall visitor arrivals times an average length of stay for each visitor - grew 16.3% in February from a year earlier to 3.3 million days. 

The US$4.7 billion ($6.6 billion) Resort World on Sentosa, owned by Malaysia’s Genting Group (GENT.KL), opened its doors to visitors in February, and will be followed in April by a partial opening for the US$5.5 billion Las Vegas Sands (LVS.N) owned Marina Bay Sands casino resort. 

Visitor arrivals to Singapore may rise by as much as 30% this year, helped by an economic recovery in Asia and by the two casinos, STB said this month.

Each casino is expected to contribute a value add of $2.7 billion, or 0.5 to 1%, to Singapore’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2015, STB estimates. 

Singapore is trying to diversify into services industries such as tourism to reduce dependence on manufacturing. 

But it suffered a fall in tourism as well as exports in 2009 during the financial crisis. The number of visitors to Singapore fell by 4.3% last year to 9.7 million, driving revenue from the sector down 19% to $12.4 billion.