The Dream Factory of China

Starvirgo, of Star Cruises, embarked on a sightseeing tour to Vietnam from the newly built Shekou Prince Bay Cruise Homeport in Shenzhen yesterday, marking the start of the city’s cruise era.

The cruise offers a five-night trip to Nha Trang, Da Nang, Halong Bay and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. On its return trip, it will visit Hong Kong. It will use the Shenzhen port as its home port until January, operating every Sunday. The cost is 2,999 yuan (US$476) per person for groups of at least three people.

Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay, chairman and CEO of Genting Hong Kong and Star Cruises, was very pleased to see that StarVirgo became the first international cruise line to choose Shenzhen as its homeport.

“Shekou will be a key homeport for Genting cruise ships as it is from Shenzhen that we can fill our ships for cruises to all parts of China, Japan, [South] Korea, Vietnam, [the] Philippines and East Malaysia,” he said.

Starting on Jan. 29, the second day of the Lunar Chinese New Year, a six-star Silver Shadow cruise will start sailing from the Shekou homeport. It is a seven-deck luxury cruise ship that can accommodate 380 guests.

It will offer over-10-day itineraries to Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.

Shekou Prince Bay Cruise Homeport, the only cruise port in China capable of accommodating 220,000-ton cruise ships, is expected to handle 1.5 million travelers per year by 2020.

Prince Bay, which is located at the southern tip of the Shekou Peninsula, has a planned area of 700,000 square meters. In May, the China National Tourism Administration approved the bay area as an experimental development zone for cruise tourism.

In recent years, China’s cruise tourism market has increased by 30 percent each year. By 2020, the number of China’s cruise tourists will reach 5 million.

China’s cruise liner ports reported that 629 cruise liners left for trips in 2015, an increase of 35 percent, with cross-border cruise travelers increasing 44 percent, according to Li Shihong, deputy head of the China National Tourism Administration.

The world’s top five cruise liner giants have all made forays into the Chinese market, helping China to become the largest and most dynamic cruise tourism market in the Asia-Pacific region, Li explained at a conference held in Shenzhen to discuss cooperation between the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Macao in cruise tourism. The government is looking to develop cruise tourism, with ports in Guangdong Province, Hong Kong and Macao as important bases, according to Li.