Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | October 2011 32 visitors travelling by sea (some people arrive at the Inner Harbour from neighbouring Zhuhai). A further 1,954,215 (31.2% of the total) transited via Taipa. It’s unlikely that even a 50% increase in ferry journey time will put off avid Chinese gamblers from making the trip to Macau. But it may not do much to assist Macau in its much-vaunted aim of being a top quality international destination with conferences and exhibitions to rival Hong Kong. Those people travelling into Macau on a foreign passport can face an additional 45-minute wait at immigration at peak times. That could be something to do with why Macau’s performance in the MICE segment has been somewhat volatile. In terms of the logistics of ferry travel to Hong Kong, Hong Kong’s Maritime Department allows half an hour’s docking time per ferry at SheungWan’s 12 berths.That means it can handle a maximum 24 sailings per hour—12 inbound and 12 outbound. This is ample capacity when TurboJet is running its normal service at 15-minute intervals between 7am and midnight. But when the firm ups its services to intervals of five minutes, as it does during some peak times, it pushes the harbour facilities to the edge of what they can manage. Feature Ups and downs—Macau’s main ferry port at the Outer Harbour is STDM’s own territory specific departure time. Macau’s Statistics andCensus Service, DSEC, says that in the first seven months of 2011, the number of visitors transiting the Outer Harbour increased by 9.2% to 4,032,759. That was 64.5%of the total