Cruise centres act to cut long wait

Singapore's two cruise centres hope to enhance the visitor experience by reducing taxi shortages and waiting time at immigration counters.

Marina Bay Cruise Centre Singapore (MBCCS) aims to lure 400 cabbies to its grounds on Oct 22 and Oct 30 with meal packs and a hundred $10 FairPrice vouchers in a "familiarisation exercise".

It is moving its taxi stand from the arrival hall lobby to the edge of its coach bay to create more space for queueing and improve visibility from the road. From Oct 22, cabbies will also be able to download a mobile phone app for real-time information on ship arrivals.

"There is definitely a taxi shortage. Ship arrivals are seasonal and drivers don't know when one arrives," said Mr Melvin Vu, chief executive officer of Sats-Creuers Cruise Services, which operates MBCCS.

He said that the firm is working with immigration authorities to provide them with ship schedules so that they can deploy more officers if needed.

Six immigration counters were added at MBCCS last year, bringing the total number to 24. It takes up to 45 minutes for a visitor to clear immigration and 20 minutes on average to wait for a taxi. MBCCS hopes to shorten the taxi wait to 10 minutes.

Singapore Cruise Centre (SCC) at HarbourFront started stationing porters at its cab stands early this year to help passengers with their luggage in a move to ease taxi queue congestion. It is also updating immigration authorities more regularly on ship arrival times, said SCC chief executive Christina Siaw, who said that 90 per cent of cruise passengers wait 10 minutes for a cab.

"But we need to think ahead to maintain our standards."

Ground handlers who attended an industry networking session on Monday have called for such measures to be taken in order to realise Singapore's ambitions to grow its cruise industry.

These handlers manage disembarkation, embarkation and tours for cruise passengers.

Up to 4,000 passengers can disembark from a cruise liner at any one time, leading to bottlenecks at immigration points and cab shortages.

A report issued by the Asia Cruise Association (ACA) at Cruise Shipping Asia-Pacific 2013, an industry conference held on Wednesday, described Singapore's immigration procedures as "unnecessarily onerous". In Singapore, all passports of passengers of a cruise liner must be collected for stamping and also be scanned on arrival, the report said.

"We would like to see immigration times reduced and more flexibility.

Cruise passengers have a limited time at each port of call," said Mr Kevin Leong, ACA's general manager. The association plans to hand its report to the Singapore Tourism Board.

Retiree T. Thirunagaran, 76, who has been on a number of cruises, described his experience of embarking a cruise ship at MBCCS in June as "chaos". "The queues to board the ship were not properly designated. There was a lot of queue cutting," he said. "But the most annoying experience was waiting for a taxi on our return."

"We waited 45 minutes. We tried calling for one from the different cab companies without success. This is clearly unacceptable."

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