Royal Caribbean, eastward ho!

Quantum of the Seas, Royal Caribbean's signature cruise. [Photo/China Daily]

What has royal caribbean done to remain competitive in china? what's your biggest achievement in china so far?

Our biggest achievement and the things we have done to remain competitive in China is that we brought the greatest cruise ships in the world for this market.

We have the most extensive coverage of the coast of any cruise brand and we have the most capacity here of any cruise brand. Two of the three Quantum class in the world for now will be in China by this summer.

But we still feel like the whole situation here is very much in the beginning, so we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of consumer awareness we need to create, we have a lot of travel agent knowledge understanding that doesn't exist yet that we need to develop, and we also get attention in the general vacation market, where cruising has very small share, but bringing ships like this to China makes more people notice us.

How have you modified your products to appeal chinese customers?

We have enhanced the retail shopping experience by bringing brands like Cartier and Tiffany as the Chinese are the world champions for shopping at least for the moment. Some of the greatest retail brands in the world previously were not interested to be on board of cruise ships.

My conversation with Cartier was probably ten years long, trying to convince them and their decision to go for finally has a lot to do with Quantum coming to China. The first Cartier was on the Mariner of the Seas in 2014.

We are being able to find a good balance between giving comfortable experiences the Chinese customers value, the food they like and know, entertainment that they can understand, and at the same time, offering completely new experiences that they may have never had before, and introducing them into a world-class experience.

An around-the-world and 86-day-long trip was made by costa's cruise ship in 2015. what's your comment on this trial?

Our industry is characterized with variety of choices. It's great that there are cruise brands offering 86-night cruises, but we don't have any plans to do that.

Our focus at the moment is on penetrating the market, growing the market, with the types of the cruises that are quite available to people. So four, five, six nights of cruises from Shanghai, Tianjin, going to Korea and Japan is the main way to grow the market, and that's our focus.

The China's cruise market is about ten to 15 years away from maturity.

How did royal caribbean perform in the china market during the last decade and what're your business prospects?

Last year, the China market contributed to about 10 percent of the revenue at the corporate level and ten years ago that figure was zero. We are optimistic about lots more opportunities in the future.

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