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The Singapore Cruise Centre: Welcoming ships from all over the world.
Unveiled at the annual Seatrade Cruise Shipping Convention in Miami, the new website marks yet another collaboration between the ten ASEAN countries to jointly promote tourism to the region.
Mr Kevin Leong, Chairman of ASEAN Cruise Working Group, said that the new cruise portal aimed to introduce Asia as a cruise destination to the global cruise industry as well as passengers new to the region.
"Besides introducing each ASEAN member country and its tourism highlights, busy cruise executives will also be able to access detailed Southeast Asian port information online which is useful for planning and developing new cruise products for Asia."
In conjunction with the launch of the website, the Working Group said it would work towards providing relevant training for travel agents to equip them with the vital cruise product knowledge.
Cruising remains one area of the travel industry where travel agents have not been disintermediated the way they have been with the airlines. It is one thing to buy a $300 air ticket online and another to buy a US$8,000 cruise package and consumers still prefer to deal with a travel agent with the right skills.
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Travel agents still rule the waves
According to the Florida-based Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), 90% of cruise travel is still booked through travel agents.
Although some of the major cruise companies such as Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises have introduced online booking tools in a bid to attract the newer travellers who prefer to book on the Web, most remain focused on providing the best travel agent connectivity and working with dedicated cruise portals offered by the Global Distribution Systems such as Amadeus Cruise.
Forrester Research predicted that more than US$900 million worth of cruises would be booked online in 2006. That's a drop in the ocean relative to the US$93.6 billion that PhoCusWright said would be booked online in the leisure/unmanaged business travel segment of the market in 2007.
The Executive Summary of the book, "Online Cruise Booking Sets Sail" by Henry H. Harteveld stated that "the Web remains a niche channel for selling cruises, and US cruise bookers account for just 6% of US leisure bookers".
"Even so, this group now accounts for nearly 40% of online US cruise passengers, and they'll buy more than $900 million worth of cruises online this year."
He recommended that to tempt more cruisers to book online, cruise suppliers and Web agencies must "tap into online cruise buyers' social networking habits and foster a supportive community for online booking; improve booking functionality and cross-channel support; and make packaging and pricing options more transparent".
Collective will to work together
Meanwhile, Mr Leong said that the ASEAN Cruise Working Group was working on several other initiatives that would promote ASEAN as a single cruising destination.
He said that the Working Group represented the collective will and commitment of the region to move this industry forward.
"We have articulated a two-year plan which is aimed at strengthening and catalysing the growth of the region's cruise industry. Our priorities now are to introduce Asian cruising to the world and ensure that we have the systems in place to welcome our guests."
Asia currently holds a 5% share of the world's cruise market. The Asia Pacific region is expected to be the next growth area in the cruise industry, not only through providing new destinations for cruise passengers from the Western markets, but also by being a new source of cruise passengers.
According to "The World Cruise Shipping Industry to 2020 by Ocean Shipping Consultants", cruise passengers in the Asia Pacific region are projected to grow by more than 40% from 1.07 million in 2005 to 1.5 million by 2010, reaching 2 million in 2015. Southeast Asian cruise passenger volumes are growing at an average annual rate of almost 5% and are forecast to reach 820,000 passengers by 2020.
