Hours before the doors opened yesterday to the grand-daddy of travel events here, the Natas fair, the line of people willing to pay $3 to get into it stretched close to 400m.

Demand to get away is so hot that the National Association of Travel Agents Singapore's chief executive officer Robert Khoo expects 60,000 people to have turned up for the fair, held at the Singapore Expo, by the time all is said and done tomorrow evening.

That is higher than last year's total of 57,000.

Asked for a sales estimate, Mr Khoo put it at $50 million, the same as last year's fair.

Add that to the more than $20 million raked in by other fairs over the past two weekends - the biggest of which were held by Chan Brothers Travel and SA Tours - and the size of Singaporeans' appetite for travel becomes clear.

Businesswoman Cheong Keok Soon, 54, summed up the reasons for this wanderlust thus: 'There is nothing much to do here. So my husband and I head overseas at least two to three times a year.'

So travel they must, but in keeping with the times, many of those among the more than 10,000 who showed up yesterday were looking to snap up a good bargain for a short trip in the region, as opposed to past fairs, where long-haul trips worth tens of thousands were as easily sold as weekend getaways to Bangkok.

Said engineer Foo Ce Jie, 27: 'This year, I am trying to keep my travelling expenditure to $1,000 to $2,000.'

Read the full story in today's edition of The Straits Times.