Macau’s second ferry terminal opened Tuesday due to a sharp increase in visitors and congestion at the existing terminal, the territory’s harbormaster’s office said Monday.
The new terminal on Taipa Island is being built to receive boats with up to 1,200 passengers, while the existing facility can deal with boats with capacity for up to 400 people.
Two companies are to operate the Taipa ferry terminal, Dragão Gigante Transportes Marítimos, a Hong Kong-Macau consortium, and Cotai Water Jets Macau, part-owned by the Las Vegas Sands casino group. The terminal is due to open Thursday.
The new ferry terminal will be fully operational in 2009 and is being built near to Macau’s international airport, next to Macau’s new gaming center with The Venetian and Grand Waldo, two casino-hotels and the territory’s main future gaming ventures.
The new ferry terminal will be able to handle 16 400-passenger ferries and three 1,200-passenger ships at the same time and is ready to boost its capacity to 20 400-passenger ferries.
Total visitor numbers arriving by sea in the first eight months of 2007 were 5.754 million, up 14.6 percent in a year-on-year comparison.
A total 318,826 visitors arrived at Macau’s interior port, 53.7 percent of these from mainland China.
In the first eight months of this year, 17.23 million tourists came to Macau, an increase of 21.8 percent compared to the same period in 2006. (macauhub) |
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