Stellar Experience bags Singapore’s LTA road assets advertising operator contract for 10 years

The Land Transport Authority (LTA), which spearheads land transport developments in Singapore, has awarded the contract for the road assets advertising operator (AO) tender to Stellar Experience Private Limited. Under the tender, the AO will be granted a 10-year concession, starting from 1 January 2024, to manage and operate the advertising spaces at LTA-owned bus and taxi shelters as well as designated pedestrian infrastructure, with an option to extend for another six years.

LTA has been appointing AOs to manage the advertising spaces, as well as the general maintenance (such as cleaning) of bus and taxi shelters since 1999. This approach allows LTA to select best-in-class AOs to manage these assets and introduce creative campaigns to boost advertising revenue, which is then shared with the Government through a concession fee model. 

This is the first time that LTA has consolidated the advertising concessions for bus and taxi shelters under its purview into a single contract. Bus and taxi shelter advertising spaces were previously tendered out as two separate AO contracts. Besides bus and taxi shelters, the consolidated contract also includes advertising spaces at approximately 120 pedestrian overhead bridges, pedestrian underpasses and covered linkways. The updating, installation and maintenance of bus stop poles are also included as part of the contract.

Consolidation of bus and taxi shelter assets, and the inclusion of additional advertising assets into single contract will provide the AO with greater scale and enable the AO to sell across multiple platforms. This will help to boost advertising revenue, and in turn the concession fees.

LTA on its website reports that it had received a total of seven proposals from four tenderers for this tender.  Proposals were evaluated on their quality, whether tenderers are able to maintain the bus and taxi shelters per LTA’s requirements, as well as their ability to generate non-fare revenue from these road assets.

Stellar Experience was assessed to have submitted the strongest overall proposal, with a competitive bid of about $270M in concession fees over the concession term. Stellar Experience is a subsidiary of SMRT Corporation that oversees its commercial businesses.