Carnival Corporation & plc recorded a profit from its operation in China for the first time last year, six years after its Costas Crociere unit commenced business there, said Howard S. Frank, Vice Chairman, Chief Operating Officer and Member of Executive Committee of the world’s largest cruise shipping group.
“In China, the cost of China business, which was established as I said in 2006, achieved profitability for the first time in 2012, which is greatly encouraging. We added a second ship to Costa Atlantica to the Asian fleet, doubling the size, more than doubling the size of Costa Victoria has already been there,” he told the shareholders meeting of the group in London last week.
“And we will source, we expect to source 185,000 Chinese passengers in 2013 on the Costa fleet. In Japan, where we are just beginning at the end of this month to open up cruising to the Japanese market. We have a sort of a step ahead of other operators. We are really the only major -- Princess will be the only major operator in Japan."
“And we are looking to source up to 100,000 passengers, Japanese passengers in 2014. You can see -- you continue to see the strategy is to move our business further East… And looking at emerging markets where we've doubled our share, that's been part of our strategy to move further East into Asia. And that has worked, so we've doubled our share for Asia in emerging markets passengers and that's worked for us. And that, in some measure, is the future growth of the business, if you will, as we move East. So that is part of our strategy,” he said.
