“Since the beginning of the year prices on new bookings have been up nicely,” said Jason T. Liberty, CFO, Royal Caribbean Cruises, speaking on the company’s first quarter earnings call.
Liberty said the rate and volume of bookings was ahead for the year at record levels despite more short Caribbean cruise capacity, which has a historical trend of booking closer-in.
“It’s rare that booking patterns are strong in all regions of the world and like most years we are seeing some variation,” said Liberty. “We are enjoying very strong demand from North American and from Asia-Pacific whereas we believe uncertainty around Brexit has softened demand from the U.K.”
A global sourcing strategy and global brands are also key to the performance.
“Our yield management and deployment optimization tools combined with an established global footprint help ensure we source guests from regions with high quality demand,” explained Liberty. “Therefore, this year we expect to source more guests from North America than we did last year. This is one of the advantages of the operating structure and capability that we have been building.”
Industry-wide concerns about Alaska and capacity growth this summer were quickly put to an end.
“Each of our brands has made hardware changes to the Alaska offering and as a result our capacity on this high-yielding product is up year-over-year. These changes along with strong demand from North America are contributing to yield growth for the summer season,” Liberty added.
