Marine exhibition to highlight cruise ships

Dong Jun / SHINE

Cruise ships will be the focus of a marine exhibition to be held in Shanghai tomorrow as cruise companies eye the huge and promising Chinese market for cruise tourism.

 The four-day Marintec China 2017 exhibition will highlight luxury cruise ships as well as developments in ocean engineering and shipping, said Xing Wenhua, president of Shanghai Society of Naval Architects and Ocean Engineers.

The exhibition will present the efforts of more than 250 shipbuilders worldwide working on cruise ships and this huge investment into building the liners is “echoing the rebounding demand in the shipping industry,” Xing said.

China is one of the largest markets leading the growth and its demand for cruise ships is growing at 30 percent annually, Michael Duck, president of foreign committee of Marintec China, said.

China is now the world's second largest cruise ship market by passengers which totaled 4.5 million last year, up 84 percent from a year ago. A total of 1,010 cruise ships visited China last year, a jump of 61 percent year on year. By 2030, the number of China's cruise ship passengers is expected to total 1.75 million, generating a demand for around five large-scale cruise ships to be built in the coming 15-20 years, the Marintec China committee predicted.

Cruise ships are also capturing a larger portion of the world's shipping market, with 32 cruise ships ordered last year or half of the new orders globally.

Held at the Shanghai New International Expo Center, the exhibition has drawn over 2,100 shipping companies worldwide, and is slated to attract 65,000 visitors,“with both figures hitting a record high,” Duck said.