NORWEGIAN Cruise Line (NCL) has not ruled out returning to China, despite removing Norwegian Joy from the country after she was purpose-built for the market and giving her a US$50 million renovation.
Steve Odell, Senior VP and MD, Asia Pacific, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings told Travel Daily the decision to pull out of China was related to profitability and the boom in demand for travel to Alaska, following Norwegian Bliss’ hugely successful inaugural season.
“The reason that we moved out of China is that we have a smaller fleet…and we knew the ship would be a more profitable unit in Alaska than it would be in China.
“I don’t think that in any way that precludes going back to China at some stage in the future…but we see a bigger opportunity for the business elsewhere,” he said.
Odell cautioned against ignoring the Chinese market though, which is growing rapidly.
“I don’t think you can ever exclude China from your future planning because its a growing market, but you have to accept that it’s a very different model to what we know as cruising in the western-sense and you have to be prepared to do business differently and you have to know the behaviour and the demographics are very different.
“We put our toe in the water and we were successful, but we can be more successful here [in Alaska],” said Odell.
Source: traveldaily