Cruise industry gears up to haul anchor in Q4

China's cruise industry is expected to resume operations in the fourth quarter, industry players and researchers said at a forum in the port city of Tianjin recently.

"The past three years of the pandemic have brought great challenges to the cruise industry. I predict that international services linking cruise ports including Tianjin will resume in the last three months of 2023," said Zheng Weihang, executive vice-president and secretary-general of the Cruise and Yacht Branch of China Communications Association.

He made a cautiously optimistic forecast that this year, the number of cruise passengers will be around 200,000, or approximately 10 percent of the total pre-pandemic numbers in 2019.