Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings has achieved pricing parity between the North American source market and the rest of the world, according to President and CEO Frank del Rio, speaking on the company’s Wednesday morning earnings call.
“It gets a better quality customer onboard, which helps on onboard revenue and we’re seeing strong onboard revenue, we saw it in Q1,” del Rio said.
“So in terms of the math on that, we have seen roughly a 13 percent decrease in the number of Europeans that have booked European sailings for 2017 versus 2016. And that decrease has been made up, not only by North Americans, but by other international sourced markets that are doing very well for us, especially Australia, Brazil, and non-China Asia have really stepped up.
“So we now have a more diversified portfolio, if you will, of channels by which we can tap to maximize our revenue, and we’re seeing it. We’re seeing it, like I said, across all three brands, across all the destinations that we cruise to, and from a variety of sources,” he continued.
The comments were made toward the end of a question and answer session with analysts that was dominated by questions regarding charter contracts for the Norwegian Joy’s China program.
For 2018, the Norwegian Joy is estimated to account for around 12.5 percent of NCLH company capacity according to the 2017-2018 Cruise Industry News Annual Report.
