SmartSea is powering Singapore Cruise Centre to have Asia’s first interoperable ferry and cruise boarding system.

The new system enables seamless self-service check-in and bag drop and automated boarding of ferry guests, said Siew Kit Lee, vice president (technology and IT) at Singapore Cruise Centre.

That in turn will help speed up cruise transit call and homeporting operations.

Lee said they expected a reduction of processing time for guests and luggage by about 20 percent, helping process more people despite limits on physical space.

Lee explained that the facility at Singapore Cruise Centre was unique, as it handled both cruise and ferry operations, with ships sharing check-in areas, baggage and immigration zones.

“A big bottleneck has been bag processing. We have no idea how many bags we are going to get. If you have two ships side-by-side, you need to make sure the bags are going to the right ship, and we have ferry operations at the same time,” he said.

SmartSea’s implementation will speed up operations significantly and have positive effects for any cruise calls happening at the same time, added Kris Vedat, CEO at SmartSea.

Vedat said it based on taking lesson’s learned from aviation, where SmartSea’s parent company, SITA, is the leader in air transport technology.

Vedat said that going forward, similar installations would require commitment from terminal operators and cruise lines, which have no standardized data sharing format.

He added that so far, cruise operators were very open to speeding up terminal processing times, and were open to sharing data to make it happen.

The same state of the art solution will be deployed at the new Integrated Ferry and Cruise Terminal (IFCT) currently under development at Harbour Front when it becomes operational in mid-2026. The facility will also cover cruise operations.