Despite pulling the Ovation of the Seas from China next summer amid reports of pricing challenges, Royal Caribbean International is still confident in the long-term view in China, according to Michael Bayley, president and CEO, speaking on the company’s second quarter earnings call with Wall Street analysts.

“I believe in the long-term potential for China has not changed at all,” Bayley said. “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.”

Royal Caribbean elected to move the Ovation to the U.S., dropping a Tianjin program in favor of Los Angeles.

“And we have strong ambitions to grow the West Coast in the U.S.  If you think about California as the sixth largest economy in the world,” Bayley said.

“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.”