Boom time for SATS-Marina Bay cruise hub; Singapore Cruise Centre (SCC) at HarbourFront has seen falling passenger numbers

October 24, 2013 Leave a comment

Boom time for Marina Bay cruise hub

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Thursday, Oct 24, 2013

Jessica Lim

The Straits Times

SINGAPORE – Singapore’s newest cruise terminal is seeing a boom, with passenger numbers expected to exceed 530,000 this travel season – more than double last season’s. This surge is due to more large ships docking at the $500 million Marina Bay Cruise Centre Singapore (MBCCS), as well as ships moving over from the only other cruise terminal at HarbourFront. MBCCS, which began operations in May last year, has lined up 110 ship calls between April 1 and the end of March next year, about 20 per cent more than in the same period last year.These include the 18-deck Diamond Princess, run by American cruise line Princess Cruises, and the 63m-tall Voyager of the Seas operated by Norwegian-American firm Royal Caribbean International. Both are due to arrive on Thursday, with about 5,800 passengers between them.

“We see more, and larger, ships making Singapore their home port, which means that they start and end their cruises here,” said Mr Melvin Vu, chief executive officer of Sats-Creuers Cruise Services, which runs MBCCS.

“Hopefully, over the next couple of years, we can grow 10 to 15 per cent per year.”

More counters have been added to MBCCS since October last year, cutting immigration time from 30 minutes to an average of 15 minutes, he added. A consultant was also hired two months ago to improve signs and traffic flow in the carpark.

The number of cruise passengers visiting Singapore has been growing 6.5 per cent annually over the past decade, hitting 913,000 last year. It is expected to reach 1.5 million by 2016.

This is happening as more cruise liners head to Asia, a largely untapped region. Cruise travellers now make up only 0.1 per cent of Asia’s population, against 3.4 per cent in North America.

Still, the Singapore Cruise Centre (SCC) at HarbourFront has seen falling passenger numbers. From April last year to March this year, 680,575 passengers passed through its gates, compared with 901,976 in the same period between 2011 and last year – a fall of nearly 25 per cent.

Its spokesman attributed the drop to several gaming ships ending operations recently and several liners moving to MBCCS.

SCC also cannot accommodate liners taller than 52m because of the cable cars running between Mount Faber and Sentosa.

MBCCS has no height restriction.

However, the situation is likely to improve for SCC, which underwent a $14 million rejuvenation last year. It has also registered 9 per cent more ship calls from the previous year.

The terminals are not the only ones benefiting from the boom. Travel agencies are cashing in too.

At Chan Brothers, for instance, demand for regional cruises from Singapore has grown 30 per cent year-on-year since 2010.

Travel agency CTC Travel has sold about 2,500 cruise packages so far this year, mostly to Singaporean families and seniors, compared to just 500 packages in the whole of last year.

A spokesman for CTC Travel, which has set up a department to specialise in selling cruise itineraries, said: “There is such a strong market now, and we want to be there to capture it.”

Filed under Macro Trends

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