Designed To Last A Lifetime
Singapore’s building an international cruise terminal to double berth capacity, take advantage of a growing market and relieve congestion – Jim Wilson reports
It will enable us to welcome more cruise ships to homeport and call on Singapore and Asia,” said a Singapore Tourism Board (STB) spokesman. “With deep waters and no height restrictions, the ICT will be capable of accommodating the latest generation of larger cruise ships.”
The new terminal’s scheduled to come into operation by the end of 2011 and STB, which owns the site, is looking for an operator to run it.
The existing, privately-owned cruise terminal, Singapore Cruise Centre (SCC), comprises two berths at Harbourfront and is about 10–15 minutes drive from the new site. SCC began operations in 1991 and has enjoyed an annual growth rate of 12% over the past five years, according to Singapore’s trade and industry minister, Lim Hng Kiang.
In 2008 SCC hosted more than 1,000 cruise ship calls and 920,000 passengers, but it’s congested – with the result that some cruise ships had to deviate last year – and it can’t take the very biggest ships. That said…“In the first half of 2009, despite the global economic downturn, we managed to achieve a 20% growth in cruise arrivals compared with the same period last year,” Kiang told delegates to the new terminal’s groundbreaking ceremony.
Growth In The Downturn
That success story underlies the thinking behind construction of the new cruise terminal. Singapore naturally wants to cash in on growing cruise business – global demand is forecast to reach 27M passengers by 2020, with the Asia-Pacific region set to account for 7% of that. The city-state aspires to be “an Asian cruise hub”, said the minister – and it’s in a pretty good location to achieve that dream:
- To the south lies Indonesia
- To the north is peninsular Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and southern China
- To the east is eastern Malaysia, the Philippines and more Indonesia.
So it’s quite easy to imagine cruise routes flowing from Singapore into the surrounding countries… though, as yet, those countries aren’t quite so advanced.
“It’s a regional project,” said Margaret Teo, STB’s assistant CEO. “Cruise p ...