Speaking during the firm’s quarterly results call on Tuesday (25 June), Carnival Corp president Josh Weinstein highlighted how pricing and occupancy levels for 2025 sailings are ahead of last year.
He explained this put the company, which currently operates nine brands although this will become eight in early 2025 when P&O Cruises (Australia) is folded into Carnival Cruise Line, in a “position of strength”.
The company reported revenues of $5.8 billion which includes an operating income of $560 million – nearly five times 2023 levels.
“As far as 2025 goes, this is the first year where we’ve been able to stop firefighting in the short-term while figuring out how to also extend the booking curve,” Weinstein said.
He stressed the difficulty of having to do “firefighting” and extend the booking curve.
“In the last three months, not only did we take more bookings for post-2024 sailings than we did for in-year sailings, we set another record for the most future bookings ever taken during the second quarter,” he added.
Carnival Corp’s booking curve in North America is “higher than it’s ever been”, noted Weinstein, who added Europe’s is at its highest point for 15 years.
New-to-cruise passenger levels rose to 10% while new-to-brand passengers jumped 6% during the last quarter, according to Weinstein.
European brands’ occupancy levels were 10 percentage points higher compared to the second quarter of 2023.
When asked why the company was seeing such strong booking levels for 2025, Weinstein said: “It’s global [demand]. It’s the brands, and it’s the deployments. The brands are doing an extraordinarily good job of getting their messages out and getting people interested.
“There’s a lot of hard work behind that across the commercial space. I wouldn’t give any shout outs one way or another because we’re seeing it so broadly.”
On Cunard’s new Queen Anne ship entering service and being officially named in Liverpool, Weinstein said: “The event generated overwhelming coverage and, as intended, broke booking records on the back of it.
“The new Queen is a step forward in every way for Cunard, while still retaining the DNA of British elegance and refinery that the brand is known for.”
