Singapore tourism officials rebut criticism

Singapore tourism officials rebut criticism

SINGAPORE (DPA): Southeast Asia's cruise industry has made a huge leap in passenger and cruise vessel traffic since its beginnings and is more international than the U.S. sector, tourism officials said on Thursday in response to recent criticism.

Although regional governments have yet to sink money into port infrastructure, interest from the private sector is increasing, said Lee Loong Koon, the Singapore Tourism Board's director of cruise marketing.

He also cited the setting up of a cruise committee by the ASEAN Chamber of Commerce, representing the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Lee was refuting remarks made by Ernst Frankel, a professor of Ocean Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at a mid-October meeting in Singapore.

Frankel said the ASEAN region has great potential to become the Caribbean of the East, but was thwarted by inadequate port infrastructure, dull itineraries and inadequate marketing efforts.

He stressed the need for ASEAN to develop proper facilities to cater to international passengers and singled out a lack of cultural excursions in itineraries.

Cruise passengers passing through the Singapore Cruise Center have increased from 62,600 at the beginning of the decade to 1,048,700 last year, the STB said.

Official figures showed 78 percent of the passengers are from ASEAN countries while Australia and New Zealand make up 7 percent, Europe 6 percent, the United States 3 percent, Japan 2 percent and China 1 percent.

"The regional cruise industry is in fact more international than in the United States, where 90 percent of passengers are Americans," the Shipping Times quoted Lee saying.

The first cruise working committee in ASEAN has been set up for the sharing of databases, joint advertising, information exchange, and eventually simplifying port procedures and immigration, he noted.

ASEAN groups Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

The meeting Frankel attended was told by other ocean experts that only Singapore and Malaysia have taken a proactive approach and invested heavily in developing their ports to handle cruise vessels.

With the Caribbean facing saturation and ships looking for new markets, Frankel recommended aiming for the higher-level cruises which requires better facilities.