China has made great progress in shipbuilding industry to become the biggest market player globally, creating their own territory in the field. However, its map is still not complete till now. Cruise, especially luxury cruise, is exactly the last piece to make the entire puzzle intact.
Development in cruise market is of significant meaning for Chinese shipbuilding to enhance technology level, improve product structure, realize industrial upgrade and strengthen international competitiveness. It’s the long-term strategy for China to grow to a shipbuilding power.
As the two bright pearls on the shipbuilding crown, LNG carriers and large luxury cruise has also been pursued earnestly by market players. With the vigorous economic growth and continuingly active cruise market, China is also marching into cruise newbuidling after successfully winning its market share in global LNG carrier sector.
Cruise is a high-tech combination of GPS, environmental-protection system, desalination system and many advanced technologies internationally. China’s achievements in shipbuilding and ship-related equipments have laid sound technical foundations for the nation to develop cruise construction. Besides, economic basis and great policy support would further back its plan.
Nevertheless some experts point out that the design of cruise is greatly different from and more complicated than usual ship type in hull, insider decoration, power energy and other supporting facility design. Till present, China has successfully built shore-based cruise, but the country still has a long way to go to develop scale cruise industry.
China is currently facing great challenges in building cruise for its disadvantages in its craft, worker quality, details handling, etc. Besides, the comfort is also a difficulty for Chinese shipbuilder to overcome by better controlling the vibration, voice and gas emission. Moreover, the current domestic maximum newbuidling length is about 400m which would only be reached by block construction. The breakthrough in relevant research, core technology and supporting equipment design is essential fro China to develop on cruise in the future.
Europe countries have traditionally dominated the design and building technology of cruise, some shipyard official think that it is a much easier way to learn from those countries by team visit and participating in their projects. In this way we could make precise and feasible position of technology development and customer needs. In addition, we also have to take the specific habits and economic conditions of target consumers into consideration while determining detailed ship design.
Experts from Shanghai Maritime University suggest insiders refer to the experience of S. Korea and Japan in developing cruise by investments and mergers. It is efficient to acquire and master the building technology and crafts.
Moreover, the operation of cruise is a kind of multi-industry and multi-department cooperation and coordination for its multiple functions. Therefore, apart from construction, shipyards also have to improve its capability in cost control, security guarantee and environment protection, etc.