Why we should support the Penang Harbour Cable Car

I would not have called it Sky Cab. But beyond that, I feel the Chief Minister of Penang could have done a better job in selling the Penang Harbour Cable Car (which is what I would call it). As a result, some Penang people - in their usual Penang self - reacted negatively and pessimistically towards the project. To me, this is most unfortunate, because if we don't make this project happen, we will miss out on a good opportunity. I write this message to everybody in Penang, in the hope that I can help you understand the benefits.

Often, whether something works or not depends on how we sell it. In my opinion, the Chief Minister should not have positioned the cable car as an alternative mode of transport. Therefore, calling it Sky Cab, which provides a connotation of a taxi or commuter transport, might not generate the right response. To ride it once in a while may be fun, but to ride it every day as a commuter is a bit of a stretch. The Chief Ministger should have promoted it as a tourist product. Sometimes, everything boils down to marketing. How we sell an idea can either make it or break it.

Compare it to the London Eye, the Ferris wheel beside the River Thames in London. People are willing to pay £29.95 (RM163) to board a gondola that goes round and round. Since it opened, the London Eye has become a significant landmark for London.

The Penang Harbour Cable Car is bigger than the London Eye. You will see even more of Penang from it, because you will be crossing the sea on board. If you think nobody will be willing to board it, then let me shift your focus to another tourist transport: the Penang Hill Funicular Train. On many days, huge crowds queue to board it, even though they are only going up a hill. In comparison, the Penang Harbour Cable Car is taking you to Penang Mainland, which is many, many times bigger than Penang Hill, and has even more tourist attractions to offer.

How we sell our tourist product matters. We should never say "the Penang Hill Funicular Train is better than the Penang Harbour Cable Car" or "the Penang Harbour Cable Car is better than the Penang Hill Funicular Train." Our position should be, "Your visit to Penang is not complete until you have taken the Penang Hill Funicular Train and the Penang Harbour Cable Car." In so doing, we make sure both tourist product reaps equal benefit.

Whenever a new idea is hatched, we should never be afraid to try new things. If we don't believe we can, then we can't. If we believe we can do it, even against overwhelming odds, we will do it.

Take Singapore. Today we see it as a developed nation with pristine streets. How many of us remember the Singapore fifty years ago, when it was crowded, the people were poor, and the unemployment rate was high? And on top of that, it was ousted from the Federation. It was not Singapore's idea to go on its own. It was tossed out. And yet, because it has a will to survive, it overcame the odds.

When opportunities present themselves to us, instead of saying "no" and "cannot", we should be saying, "Why not?" If it appears difficult to be successful, we should ask, "How do we make it successful" rather than to dismiss it from the start.

There is something about the Penang Harbour Cable Car that is superior to the Penang Hill Funicular Train or the Ferry. On both the train and the ferry, the journey is a commute. People take it to go somewhere. With the cable car, the journey IS the destination. And because of that, if we know how to make full use of it, the cable car offers a lot of job and business opportunities to Penang people.

As each gondola can accommodate just 10 passengers, it is a group size than can be managed by a tour guide. (In comparison, if you take the funicular train, you are crammed with other people, and the journey is so rushed there is no tour guiding opportunity.) The Penang Harbour Cable Car can be a packaged tour for sightseeing the Penang Harbour, enroute to more tourist attractions, whether on Penang Mainland or Penang Island. Each gondola is a job opportunity for a tour guide. With the number of gondolas, imagine the number of jobless tour guides it will benefit. And as the guides take the tourists elsewhere upon arrival, they are replaced by more tour guides.

Tour operators can create tour packages where the guests are taken across the harbour. Tourists arriving by bus and train in Butterworth are received by tour guides who take them on the cable car ride. At both cable car stations, there should be feeder bus services to go to various destinations. The CAT free shuttle bus can also be extended to the cable car station.

But is there anything to see on the cable car ride? Again, it all depends on how we market something. If people are willing to pay RM163 to go round and round on a ferris wheel, they will consider taking this cable car.

Let's take a hypothetical cable car tour from Butterworth to George Town, with you as the tour guide. As soon as the gondola leaves the cable car station, you greet your guests and start your aerial tour, beginning with Penang Sentral and the Butterworth Railway Station. You speak of the significance of the railway station, which was originally located beside the Prai River, and its impact on the 19th century tin mining industry.

As the cable car ascends to begin its crossing of the harbour, you explain to your guests that they are now crossing the oldest harbour in the country that is in continuous use. You tell them that even though Singapore Harbour is bigger, Penang Harbour is older than Singapore. In fact, it is even older than colonial Hong Kong. These are little trivias to keep your guests interested and entertained.

Your gondola passes over a Penang ferry, and that's your chance to explain the ferry, which was once the only cross-channel transport. Then you ask your guests, "Can you tell me one benefit of taking the cable car over taking the ferry?"

Your guests will come up with various responses, and then you give them the answer. "With the ferry, you get to see only one Penang Bridge, but with the cable car, you get to see two!"


With the ferry, you only get to see one Penang Bridge (1 May 2015)


And your guests looked out the window and be awestruck by the majesty of two mammoth bridges spread out across the Penang Channel. As the cable car is travelling at 90 meters above the sea, you get a fantastic aerial view of the harbour.

As the cable car approaches Penang Island, you tell your guest about the waterfront and explain to them the clan jetties, how the jetties got started, and how many there are today. If your guest says, "Oh, this is so interesting, I want to explore it!" you can then respond by saying, "No problem, when we arrive in George Town, I can take you to explore the clan jetties." And with that, you have created another job opportunity for yourself.

Very soon, George Town spreads out before your eyes, and you quickly tell your guests about the George Town World Heritage Site, pointing out to them the various attractions from a birds-eye-view, something you could not have done if you took the ferry. Instead of a jaded trip across the sea, your guests can now look forward to an exciting start to their vacation on Penang Island.

Upon arrival at the cable car station, your guests are received by tour coaches, hotel vans and limousines, ready to transport them to various tourist destinations or to their hotels. Simultaneously, your colleagues could be taking other tourists from Penang Island heading for Butterworth, and giving them an inverted version of the tour. There will also be tour coaches and hotel vans waiting in Butterworth, to take the arriving guests to their accommodation or their tours.

The sum benefit is job opportunities for a lot of people on both sides of the Penang Harbour: tour guides, drivers, coach captains, people working in hotels, tourist attraction operators, and more. This is trickle down economics. All because of one tourist product that we all support together.

"If we bring out the honey, the bees will come." By that, I mean if we create a fantastic tourist product and we market it right, the tourists will come. People from all over Malaysia will decide to plan a visit to Penang, because they are now able to cruise above the Penang Harbour, something they would not have been able to do before.

Some of you might not perceive any direct benefit from the Cable Car service, but often the benefit comes around indirectly. You might not need the job, but it could be a job for your son or daughter, or for your van driver uncle who previously had not been able to get regular assignments. If you are a tour guide, it could even become an opportunity to earn a regular income for you.

As a tour guide, assuming you had previously depended on the cruise ships as your main source of income, the Penang Harbour Cable Car is going to create a new earning opportunity that may give you a steady income every single day. Once you are earning from it, take a moment to look back at how difficult life was back then, where there would be no income when no cruise ship arrives.

If you are a tour operator, I can think of various business opportunities that you may pluck. For example, you may even charter a few gondolas to create Premier Cross Harbour Tours. Instead of taking 10 people, these premier gondolas take just 5 passengers, who enjoy larger seats. As they cross the harbour in style, in the company of a professional tour guide, they are served with caviar and various hors d'oeuvres, while they drink Perrier.

There are a lot of job and business opportunities that can benefit Penang people, as long as we support this tourist product and market it correctly. As a tourist product and not as a mode of commuter transport. For that reason, I urge people who are in the tourist industry, especially tour guides and particularly the leadership of the Penang Tourist Guide Association, to throw their full support to this project.

If you do not like the cable car project, then don't ride on it when it is built. But do not take it away from people who will benefit from it.

People who teach tour guide courses should in particular be supportive, for this is job opportunity for newbie tour guides, those who have just gotten their badge. Aren't we supposed to help our students, rather than to toss them in and let them sink or swim? Speaking negatively about this project may be incongruent to your purpose to help new tour guides. Your students may even tell you this: "You are established. You have your contacts. You have a steady income. Me, I am new. I need to earn a living. This cable car thing could be a good job opportunity for me. Why are you trying to take this away from me?"

For the above reason, I urge everybody, and particularly the tour guides and those in the travel industry, to be united in their support of this project.

From what I understand, the Chief Minister is going to proceed with the cable car project anyway, unless it fails an Environmental Impact Assessment. But even if it proceeds, that is not good enough. For us to reap the full benefit from this project, everybody in Penang has to understand its benefits, so that we can all work together to benefit from it.

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