The former Dream Cruises ship, Genting Dream will set sail once again on June 15 from Singapore under the brand new company Resorts World Cruises.

A vessel that used to be operated by Genting Hong Kong-owned Dream Cruises was set up by Malaysian tycoon Lim Kok Thay, Chairman and board executive of Genting Group. It was registered on Mar 9, less than two months after Genting Hong Kong filed to wind up the company after failing to secure funding to pay its debts.

Dream Cruises ran three ships - Genting Dream, Explorer Dream and World Dream. Resorts World Cruises has taken over Genting Dream and is currently in negotiations with banks and interested parties to acquire the other two ships.

World Dream, which operated cruises to nowhere from Singapore, stopped taking new bookings after its parent company ran into financial trouble. The ship ceased operations on Mar 2.

Resorts World Cruises said on Wednesday (May 18) that it would offer complimentary cruise credits of “equivalent value” for all paid affected passengers by World Dream’s cruise cancellations in Singapore between Mar 2 and Aug 31 this year as a “gesture of goodwill”.

The credits will be valid from Jun 15 to end-March 2023.

At a news conference on Wednesday, the company said this would only be applicable to affected World Dream customers who have yet to receive any refund from their original booking source.

“From our records, there were 13,000 (affected) customers but we also understand that many of our customers have actually got their refund through credit card companies,” said Mr Michael Goh, president and head of international sales of Resorts World Cruises.

He added that the company does not have a record of how many people have claimed their refunds so far.

Although the new company has taken over the Genting Dream vessel, it maintains that Resorts World Cruises is separate from Genting Hong Kong.

“The provisional liquidator could not revive the (Dream Cruises) brand and so, we worked with the Chinese lessors who are the owners of the ship and decided to restart the cruise under the Resorts World brand,” said Resorts World Cruises’ CEO and executive director Colin Au, who was formerly deputy CEO of Genting Hong Kong.

“This new brand has got nothing to do with Genting Hong Kong, it’s a new cruise brand,” he added.

Genting Dream will launch several cruises to nowhere departing from Singapore on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. It plans to launch destination cruises to Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia from Sep 30.