Strong onboard revenue numbers contributed to a 10 percent increase in total gross revenue per passenger day for the fourth quarter of 2021 when compared to the fourth quarter of 2019 at Royal Caribbean Group

Michael Bayley, president and CEO of Royal Caribbean International, said he was initially shocked at the onboard revenue numbers when the company’s restarted cruising out of the U.S. last July. 

“It was really, really positive. And it’s just continued,” he said.

While lower occupancies on the ships may help, Bayley said passengers were spending more in every category.

“We also are really pleased with what we’ve seen with our investment in the pre-cruise technology that’s really started to come online over the past 12 months. And our pre-cruise penetration is significantly higher than it’s ever been before,” he noted. “So we’re in a very positive environment. We know back in ’20 and ’21, the savings rate was significantly higher and credit card debt was much lower. So we do think that people are happy. We’ve seen Net Promoter Score on all of our ships and brands being at record highs. So we’ve got a lot of happy customers in that happy frame of mind.

“They’re opening up their wallets and they’re spending literally all over the place. So we’re very pleased with what we’re seeing,” Bayley added.

Pre-cruise packaging and pre-sales of onboard items then drive more spending when guests are aboard.

“As a rule of thumb, every $1 of pre-cruise spend is worth an incremental $0.50 of onboard spend, and that’s pretty much a rule of thumb that’s been true for quite some time.”