World’s top cruise company Royal Caribbean Cruises mulls an expansion in the Philippines, saying the country's "amazing adversity and richness of islands" is what they are looking for.
Royal Caribbean Cruises President and Chief Operating Officer Adam Goldstein is in the Philippines to meet with the potential investor groups and the Philippine government to discuss plans for expansion.
Goldstein said with Philippines' big potential for the cruise market, they need to think ahead of the game and propose for the construction of the pier infrastructure as early as now.
“Infrastructure projects typically take three to five years to come into situation, so we want to make sure that potential investor groups, the government and others know what we think is possible ahead of the game, so we came here to say a world city like Manila should really have significant pier infrastructure that can take potentially even the biggest cruise ship in the world,” he said.
He said that although the development of infrastructure needed for the expansion will take time, he foresees the plan will materialize.
“The Philippines has this amazing adversity and richness of islands and that’s typically what we look for, I would say in theory there’s almost unlimited destinations, it will just take time to develop routes and develop traffic that will allow us to go to different parts of the Philippine profitably, but I foresee that it will happen,” he said.
Goldstein bared their medium term plan is to establish ports of call in the Philippines for cruises from Hong Kong.
"In the medium to longer term is cruises from Hong Kong which is a new developing area, the ships can reach Manila and other parts of the Philippines without too much difficulty, they can be incorporated into attractive itineraries," he said.
A longer term plan includes setting up actual cruises originating in the Philippines.
"A little bit longer term we think, as the Chinese expands their travelling for leisure and volume, the places like Boracay will become available to them and even possibly in the medium and long term, ships may be able to begin and end cruises from Manila or from Boracay because of Chinese and others flying to the destination in the Philippines possibly doing a hotel stay before or after the cruises, taking a cruise in the region,” Goldstein said.
Source: Magno Ardenia, ABS-CBN News
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