Royal Caribbean has pulled the Ovation of the Seas from China due to pricing challenges, but remains confident in the long-term potential of the Chinese market.
The company is pleased with the performance of the Spectrum in the Chinese market and plans to continue growing in China.
Royal Caribbean chose to move the Ovation to Los Angeles, to maximise performance and take advantage of opportunities on the West Coast.
Despite the shift in deployment, Royal Caribbean is still committed to the China market and plans to announce more deployments in the future.
Michael Bayley, president and CEO, speaking on the company’s second quarter earnings call said “I believe in the long-term potential for China has not changed at all. Spectrum, as you know, started operating it out of Shanghai a few months ago. It’s performing very well in the market, and we feel good about the China market. It still hasn’t reached the levels we’re seeing in the American market. And of course, this is where we’ve got these good choices. We have strong ambitions to grow the West Coast in the US. If you think about California as the sixth largest economy in the world.”
“Navigator, which is the ship we put in the West Coast about a year or so ago has been performing exceptionally well. So we kind of faced with this choice, should we deploy Ovation into Tianjin or should we deploy into California? And we made the decision really based upon maximizing performance, but it doesn’t in any way indicate that we’re moving away from the China market. We’re quite committed to the opportunity there. And I think you’ll see that we’ll be announcing in the future more deployment into China.”
