John Weinstein, president and CEO of Carnival Corporation, downplayed concerns from Wall Street analysts around a spike in Caribbean cruise capacity in the first quarter.

More ships, geopolitical concerns, airfare costs and private island development are driving a large Caribbean increase.

Weinstein, speaking on Carnival’s fourth quarter and year end earnings call, said the question they had been getting most was around the Caribbean, and the 14 percent increase in non-Carnival capacity coming into the market. Weinstein said overall, the Caribbean market was up some 27 percent in cruise capacity.

“Now even against that backdrop, we continue to drive the business forward, underscoring the advantage of our diversified global portfolio,” Weinstein explained.

“We are also continuing to successfully mitigate inflation through effective cost management. And again, with no ship deliveries for 2026, we don’t have the advantage of offsetting large cost increases with significant capacity growth.

“We like the portfolio approach we’re taking even into the Caribbean because when you think about our mix and you look at the first quarter, 20 percent of our Caribbean capacity is actually from our European brands that have fly crew programs going into places like Barbados and Dominica, and it works very well for us,” Weinstein said.

He went onto say the Caribbean is and will always be a fantastic market for Carnival’s bands.

“And yes, we have successfully absorbed elevated supply in the Caribbean before and in Europe and Alaska many times over the last many decades,” he said. “And it comes and it goes and it gets absorbed and we move along … on a rational basis we want to maintain price integrity in the market for us. And at the same time, making sure we get folks onboard that are happy and spending money not only in the ticket but onboard.”