Luxury liner tests popularity on Chinese mainland
23/4/2008 17:37
Superstar Virgo, the first luxury liner to take tourists from China's
mainland directly to international waters, has received over 700 bookings for
its planned maiden cruise via east China's Xiamen City on May 8.
Until now
mainland tourists have had to go to luxury cruise terminals in Hong Kong or
Singapore to take ocean-going cruises.
The ship's Malaysia-based operator
Star Cruises did not comment on the booking for the maiden trip. But Wu Mingfa,
a marketing manager of Star Cruises, said that Xiamen is an ideal port for
international luxury liners to tap the huge market potential across China's
mainland, Hong Kong and Macau special administrative regions as well as
Taiwan.
The luxury ship made the first call at Xiamen on the eastern coast of
Fujian Province on April 11, bringing over 1,600 overseas tourists from Hong
Kong, Taiwan, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Canada, Singapore and
Australia.
Starting from this maiden cruise through October, Superstar Virgo
will, in total, make 25 regular calls at Xiamen at 1:00 p.m. on every Thursday
and return to Hong Kong at 10:00 p.m. on the same day, said the
manager.
Superstar Virgo is one of the largest luxury liners in the Star
Cruises fleet, which measures 76,800 gross tonnes with 935 guest rooms able to
accommodate 1,870 passengers.
The World Cruise Shipping Industry estimates
the number of cruise passengers in Asia will jump 40 percent from 1.07 million
in 2005 to 1.5 million in 2010, fuelled in part by Asia's growing affluence and
improved flight options to regional port cities.
Xiamen and Shanghai are two
of the earliest ports in China's mainland that opened to visits from overseas
luxury liners, and have been receiving such cruises for over 20 years.
Xinhua
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