With a year's head start on Shanghai terminal, planners want to make city first port of call in China for growing cruise industry
Xiamen, in Fujian province, is building a grand cruise terminal and property-related project in a bold move aimed at winning a slice of the fast-growing Asian cruise industry and capturing the market for increasingly affluent Chinese travelling outside the country.
It will be the first such large-scale property development with the cruise theme in China and will be built about a year earlier than the 130,000-square-metre cruise terminal in Shanghai.
Shanghai's cruise terminal is scheduled for completion by the end of next year and should be in full operation in 2008, way ahead of the 2010 World Expo.
Developed by government-backed Xiamen Port Authority, the project is hoped to transform the city into the gateway to China, according to Ken Wai Yip-kai, a director of architectural firm Aedas, which is in charge of the project's design.
Mr Wai said construction of the Xiamen cruise terminal will be completed within two months, by which time it will be capable of handling a single 150,000-deadweight-tonne cruise ship similar to the Queen Mary 2.