Cruise Leaders Issue Bullish Forecast at Seatrade Conference

Cruise industry growth will continue despite an "inconsistent" Wave Season and recent economic concerns, said top company executives speaking at the Seatrade Cruise Global conference in Miami.

Speaking at Tuesday’s “State of the Global Cruise Industry” keynote panel session, the leaders of the cruise industry’s largest companies presented a bullish forecast, asserting the businesses’ continuing resilience even in uncertain economic times.

“Wave [Season] for us was inconsistent [and] choppy,” said Josh Weinstein, president, CEO and chief climate officer of Carnival Corp. “It wasn’t like a normal Wave. We went into the year better booked than ever before at higher prices, [but] there were highs [and] lows as we went through the quarter,” he said.

“I think what we found was something that happens unfortunately not infrequently in our business: the macro economy does have an impact at times on how people are living their lives,” said Weinstein.

“There was a time this year when bookings were less than we anticipated, but what happens is people get used to the new normal, they take it in and then the bookings picked up again,” he said. “At the end of the day, we are not immune from a recession, but we are super-resilient.”

“We got what we needed for 2025, but the amazing thing was we had more bookings in the first quarter than we have ever had as a company when it comes to further out years, 2026 and 2027,” Weinstein added.

The European cruise marketplace encountered similar overall success in 2025. “We did an incredible job in Europe to get to the wider consumer market to get what cruising is all about,” said Pierfrancesco Vago, executive chairman of MSC Group’s cruise division.

“We penetrated the market extensively throughout the different countries in Europe. There has also been political acceptance and understanding of what the cruise industry provides, and the market is responding. We increased our rates, revenues and yields. We’re very pleased with the market.”

Cruise lines have also worked hard to rebuild financially following the years lost to the pandemic, said Harry Sommer, president and CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. “We all know there was a ‘dark period’ in 2020 and 2021, but [2024] was just a thrilling year,” he said.

“I agree with comments Josh made that this year started a little bit choppy,” said Sommer, “but as he also said, people get used to the new normal. Two shaky days in the stock market do not make us change our long-term financial strategies and models.”

“The biggest single thing we could do as a cruise line to recover from that situation was to generate a wonderful vacation experience and great financial results,” Sommer said.

“We reported yields up almost 10 percent year-over-year, the highest yield growth in the history of the company. The ships had more passengers than ever before, but even more importantly, we had record guest satisfaction scores and record repeat rates,” he said.

“So when you provide a product where you have happy customers on full ships who want to come back, that’s a tremendous recipe for financial recovery. It’s full steam ahead.”

“Current economic ‘noise’ is not going to in any way prevent us from having our collective ambitions to grow this industry,” said Jason Liberty, Royal Caribbean Cruises’ CEO.

Indeed, panel moderator Anne Kalosh noted that industry fleet expansion will continue as cruise lines have announced orders for six new ships this week, including new vessels for Carnival and Viking Cruises.

“There is great confidence in the cruise companies as we’re managing our businesses for the longer term, said Liberty. “We’re ordering ships further and further out, and we are producing ships that are putting themselves in position to help us on our collective journey of getting to net-zero emissions by 2050.”

Liberty added that while mega-ships have held the spotlight in terms of new cruise tonnage, “There’s a view that [only] big ships are being produced. In reality, about half of the orderbook is ships under 100,000 gross tons,” he said.

“A lot of ships that are being produced across our brands and the collective cruise lines are a different flavor depending on the segment and the customer you’re looking to go after,” said Liberty.

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