The site of the China Cruise and Yacht Industry Association’s trade show next week, Tianjin is known as “the diamond of the Bohai Gulf” (Bohai being the innermost gulf of the Yellow Sea), Tianjin is the third-largest city in China next to Beijing and Shanghai. It is the busiest port in Northern China, being the main port for Beijing.
Since opening in 2010, the Tianjin International Cruise Terminal (TICT) has received over 160 calls and counted five million outbound passengers.
Over 200,000 passengers are expected next year and phase two of TICT was completed in June, seeing the port double its berth to some 1,112 meters, meaning four Oasis-size ships could call at once.
This year, Tianjin becomes China’s only terminal to be the homeport for four cruise companies, with the Costa Victoria, Royal Caribbean’s Voyager of the Seas, HNA’s Henna and Bohai’s China Taishan all sailing from the port.
To support this growing market, Tianjin Maritime Vocational College, which works with industry players to train more cruise staff, added a demo cruise/four-star hotel facility in June. The Royal Caribbean International Cruise Talent Training Center also recently announced that it had 500 graduates and another 100 students from a class dedicated to Royal Caribbean.
TICT will educate adjacent inland markets about cross-border cruise travel by leveraging existing economic networks, in particular the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei economic triangle. According to a source from TICT: “Statistics show that more than 80 percent of the tourists come from Beijing’s travel agencies.”
The ninth edition of the China Cruise Shipping and International Expo is the Asia/Pacific’s No. 1 cruise event, learn more at http://www.ccyia.com/ccs/EN/index.htm. The show takes place Oct. 15-17 in Tianjin, China.
Read a detailed analysis of all Chinese ports in Cruise Industry News Fall 2014 Quarterly Magazine, due out October 15.
Visit Cruise Industry News, the official event media sponsor and partner, at booth B77.