All the signals point to a China restart for Royal Caribbean Group in 2024, according to executives speaking on the company’s first quarter earnings call on Thursday.

“We still have some work to do, but we’ve now started to rebuild our sales organization in China, and we expect, hopefully, by late spring, early summer (2024) to be back operating out of China,” said Michael Bayley, president and CEO of Royal Caribbean International.

Bayley said that pre-pandemic, the brand was the number one brand in China by volume, having built up a significant business over the years.

The company had sent new ships to China, including the Spectrum of the Seas in 2019, and had planned for the Oasis-class Wonder to homeport out of China year-round prior to the pandemic.

“Our expectation is that this market will return to how it was pre-pandemic. The value of a Chinese customer is very high. When you look at the net revenue from a Chinese consumer. It’s typically around the same level as an American and slightly higher. So, we see that returning,” Bayley said. “The spend changes somewhat in terms of onboard spending. They skew differently in different areas. But overall, the aggregate of their spend is very high.”