From the perspective of residents of Singapore (many who hadn't seen their families in two years before the VTL) 5-6 hours of waiting for the negative test on arrival was no big deal compared to potentially weeks in a hotel but I get that spending many hours in a hotel on arrival is a big deterrent for inbound tourism. The Singapore-US VTL was also important for bilateral diplomatic relations which certainly contributed to the amount of press it got even if it involved a small number of travelers and wasn't really designed for tourists.