Resorts World Cruises, started in 2022 as a successor to Genting Hong Kong’s Dream Cruises, has announced that it will restart cruises from Hong Kong by obtaining a second cruise ship from its former company.
They plan to start the Hong Kong cruises in March using the former Explorer Dream (75,338gt). The new cruise programme is both an expansion of the Resorts World Cruises’ operation and also significant as it will be the first cruise ship homeporting in Hong Kong in 15 months.
The local authorities had permitted the former Dream Cruises and later Royal Caribbean International to introduce what was called “seacations” starting at the end of July 2021.
The cruises were carrying only local residents and not making any port calls, but were later restricted and then suspended during new surges in Covid-19 variants.
Resort World Cruises was started in June 2022 by Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay who had previously been the chairman of Dream Cruises and Genting Hong Kong before resigning at the beginning of 2022 after the financial collapse of his former firms.
The cruise line chartered one of Dream Cruises’ former ships, Genting Dream, and started with cruises from Singapore.
They are reporting that they have now chartered the former Explorer Dream which has been renamed Resorts World One.
The ship was built by Meyer Werft and delivered in 1999 as the Superstar Virgo for Genting Hong Kong which then operated as Star Cruises.
With a capacity of 1,856 passengers, she was one of the first modern cruise ships built for the Asian market.
In 2019 Genting HK rebuilt the ship at a cost of $50 million and renamed her Explorer Dream as part of their plans to expand their more upscale cruise brand Dream Cruises.
After the pandemic-related shutdown, she was one of the first cruise ships to return to service in late July 2020 operating cruises around Taiwan. The Taiwan cruises however were suspended in May 2021 due to an increase in Covid cases.
