Carnival Cruise Line reports it has reached an important milestone this summer – welcoming three million guests since the restart of guest operations in July 2021. The “banner summer” across the cruise company’s 23 ships comes as the cruise line celebrates its 50th anniversary and at time when pandemic restrictions have largely been removed.
After recording its biggest booking week in the cruise line’s 50-year history this spring, the last quarterly Carnival Corporation business update projected Carnival Cruise Line’s ships to reach nearly 110% occupancy this summer – an expectation the cruise line say is being realized in the increase of guests across the fleet.
Carnival saw its total guest count hit the two million mark in May and it has now risen to three million in less than 75 days – an average of 95,000 guests per week.
Carnival’s five busiest homeports, PortMiami, Fla., Port Canaveral, Fla., Galveston, Tex., Long Beach, Calif., and New Orleans, La., were among the first to resume guest operations and account for 77% of all Carnival embarkations and a guest total of 2,324,823.
Port Canaveral is also home to Carnival’s new Excel-class flagship and the first ship in North America powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG) Mardi Gras, which is reaching a milestone of its own, welcoming 250,000 guests on board since its inaugural sailing.
In terms of the number of sailings, Carnival’s hometown of PortMiami leads the way with more than 215 voyages to date.
Meanwhile, homeports in Tampa, Fla., Charleston, S.C., Baltimore, M.D., Mobile, Ala., Jacksonville, Fla., Norfolk, Va., Seattle, San Francisco, and New York, many of which resumed operations this year, have also been key to Carnival’s strategy in reaching the three million mark of total guests since restart.
In addition to sailing from all 14 of Carnival’s year-round and seasonal US homeports, the cruise line’s three-ship deployment to the Pacific Northwest set in motion its largest Alaskan season ever, with approximately 100,000 guests expected to embark on vacations from both Seattle and San Francisco – the latter also Carnival’s newest seasonal homeport, strengthening its position as the cruise line embarking more guests than any other operator from California.
In all, Carnival ships have made more than 3,000 port-of-call visits at 92 individual ports in 36 countries:
• Carnival ships have called on Mexico the most with about 800 visits – half of which have been to Cozumel, making it the cruise line’s most popular port
• After Cozumel (385 calls), the other destinations included in the top five are: Nassau (320 calls) and Half Moon Cay (155 calls) in The Bahamas, Amber Cove, Dominican Republic (159 calls), and Mahogany Bay, Roatan (123 calls).
• In Cozumel, the most popular excursion includes catamaran sailing and snorkeling at Paradise Reef, enjoyed by 30,000 guests. An excursion featuring a day at Blue Lagoon Island is the most popular in Nassau, frequented by more than 25,000 guests. And in Mahogany Bay, 13,000 guests have chosen to “Discover Roatan” by observing the island’s wildlife
The cruise line adds that the rapid return of its guest based is also consistent with fleet growth that has been previously announced, with five ships coming on stream over the next two years:
• This November, Costa Luminosa will become Carnival Luminosa and begin sailing seasonally from Brisbane, Australia
• Carnival Celebration, an Excel-class ship powered by LNG, will join its sister Mardi Gras as part of the Carnival fleet and begin service from PortMiami in November
• A third Excel-class ship, Carnival Jubilee, is set to debut next year from Galveston
• And Carnival also continues to plan the launch of its new concept, “Choose Fun with Carnival, Italian Style,” which will bring two additional ships from Costa into the Carnival fleet in 2023 and 2024 respectively.
Carnival notes that it recently broke ground on a new US$200-million cruise port in Freeport, Grand Bahama which officials anticipate will breathe new tourism life into the economy of the second-largest city in The Bahamas.