New ships joining the fleets for Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises, Azamara Club Cruises and TUI Cruises are helping drive record earnings for Royal Caribbean Cruises.

“Demand for (Symphony of the Seas) has been strong since we opened the European season for sale, and increased further upon her delivery a few weeks ago,” said CFO Jason T. Liberty, on the company’s first quarter earnings call. “Prices for Symphony have not only exceeded our lofty expectations, they’ve also been even better than we saw from Harmony last year. Edge will join Celebrity’s fleet at the end of the year and has been enjoying very strong demand at very high prices.

“Outside of our smaller Azamara and Galapagos ships, Edge is our best booked ship for 2019 from both a load factor and price perspective,” Liberty continued. “We just took ownership of Azamara Pursuit and following a major modernization, she will begin sailing in Europe in August. But despite opening for sale a year later than her sister ships, Pursuit’s European sailings are already booked at comparable load factors.”

Liberty also noted strong performance for TUI Cruises in the German market.

“Demand for TUI Cruises’ brand is exceptionally strong and continues to accelerate as they further expand their destination offering,” he added.

Michael W. Bayley, president and CEO of the Royal Caribbean International, also echoed strong comments about booking performance for the new Symphony of the Seas.

“Symphony is knocking it out of the park in terms of booking. I mean, it was doing exceptionally well before we introduced it. And literally, one little statistic, the week after we introduced Symphony of the Seas, our bookings beat track by 50 percent,” Bayley said “That’s the week after we introduced the ship. So it’s really performing well.”