After recently announcing its return to China in 2024, Royal Caribbean Group is preparing for the reintroduction of the Spectrum of the Seas to the market sailing four- and seven-night itinerary from Shanghai.

“[On China] Yes, we’re open for sale. We had a kind of thoughtful process as it relates to bringing back our employees over time. So as we move through 2023, we obviously take on more expense, and we have accommodated that in the forecast obviously, and we also mitigated some of that expense. And then as we look into 2024, it will be a full year of typical operations for a one-ship operation with a lot of shared services provided by our Singapore office” said Michael Bayley, president and CEO of the Royal Caribbean International brand.

“I can tell you that it’s early days yet, but the signals look pretty positive,” Bayley said, speaking on the company’s second quarter earnings call.

“We feel good about what we’re seeing in terms of bookings. And we feel pretty comfortable with operations and how we scale back our teams to sell and market and operate our China operation.”

Despite it being a restart year, Bayley added that they “feel very positive about China.”