Lindblad Expeditions CEO Dolf Berle said on the company’s first quarter earnings call that bookings for the back-half of 2022 and 2023 are running well ahead compared to 2019 levels.

“We continue to be very pleased with the pace of bookings for both the back half of 2022 and the full year 2023,” he said.

“When compared with the same date in 2019, which is most relevant, given it was pre-pandemic, bookings for the back half of 2022 are 50% ahead of bookings for what was the back half of 2019 and bookings for the full year 2023 are 32% ahead of bookings for what was the full year 2020,” Berle continued. “These strong growth numbers reflect our increased capacity, the positive impact of guests who have been rescheduled from prior periods and a robust booking environment with particular strength in Alaska and Antarctica across both new and existing ships.”

CFO Craig Felenstein said business was trending ahead of 2019 so far this year, speaking on the company’s first quarter earnings call.

“Since early January, bookings every week have significantly exceeded bookings in the same week in 2019, and there is no question that there is significant pent-up demand to get out and explore the world’s amazing geographies,” Felenstein said. 

Despite headwinds from omicron to start the year, Lindblad’s CFO said that was short-lived, with bookings accelerating in mid January. 

“The booking trends for the full year 2022 and into 2023, actually reversed course really after second week of January, where we started to really nice increases pretty steadily throughout the quarter and that has continued throughout (April),” he said.

In fact, Felenstein said that the company was almost going to be profitable in the first quarter prior to the omicron variant, as pricing and demand for expedition travel continues to build.