There were 6 bidders in the URA’s Water Transportation Tender for Singapore River. The top 2 bidders were Singapore Network Services Pte Ltd (SEN) and Yellow Pages/Leisure Empire (YPE) at $101,000 and $88,000 respectively.
DUCKtours and Singapore River Cruise are currently paying about $17,000 a month to STB respectively. These 2 bids pushed the monthly rental to a record high. With the new tender, URA will start collecting the river licensing rental from 1 Jan 2013.
SEN is managed by Seow Nyuk Fong, who was also the ex-director/shareholders of the defunct Singapore Explorer Pte Ltd. Singapore Explorer incidentally was the previous Singapore River (water taxi) operator up to 2007. SEN is today still operating the old Singapore Explorer trolley buses.
From their lineage, SEN does have the experience in the water taxi and tourism trade, making it a contender for the URA Water Taxi tender. At the bid price of $101,000, it is an impressive 590% hike in monthly rental. Considering this is a ‘revenue generating’ tender with revenue having a high weightage of 60% in tender evaluation, it is curious that they were not awarded the river tender even as the highest bidder. Full story
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