Cruises: “2023 Wave Season” Off to Strong Start With January Web Traffic up 28% and Conversions Up 55%

Carnival leads in web traffic while Royal Caribbean leads in converted visits. All seven leading cruise lines saw web traffic growth in January, with upstart Virgin Voyages growing the fastest, rising 318%.

Key takeaways

• Similarweb data shows a peer group of seven leading cruise lines (Carnival, Royal Caribbean, NCL, Celebrity, Princess, Holland America and Virgin) saw January web traffic growth up 28%, year over year in aggregate.
• Virgin Voyages grew the fastest in January, up 318%, year over year, and 46% versus December.
• Carnival led in January’s share of traffic at 30% of the peer group, followed by Royal Caribbean (24%) and NCL (16%). Though Virgin is the smallest at 5% of the peer group, its share of traffic has more than doubled in the past year.
• Similarweb conversion data (visits to a website that end up in a sale) shows five leading cruise operators (Carnival, Royal Caribbean, NCL, Celebrity and Princess) saw 55% growth in conversions in January, year over year, led by 125% growth at Royal Caribbean.

All seven major cruise lines saw web traffic growth in January 2023

A look at the chart below shows that all seven peers we looked at in this report saw year-over-year growth in January, led by Virgin’s 318% growth, followed by 117% growth at Holland America, 107% for NCL, 103% for Royal Caribbean, 92% for Celebrity, 87% for Princess and 66% for Carnival.

This strong growth shows that pent-up demand for cruises remains intact, and is a good omen for bookings for the industry for the rest of the 2023 wave season (consumers tend to book their annual cruises at the start of the year, between January and March).

Despite slower than peer average growth, Carnival has highest share of traffic

Using share of traffic as a proxy for market share, since most consumers will visit a cruise line’s website before booking, you can see that Carnival leads this peer group with a 30% share of traffic, followed by Royal Caribbean at 24% and NCL at 15%. Notably, though Virgin trails all peers in this report with only a 5% share, they have more than doubled their share of traffic over the past year, as they had a 2% share of traffic in January 2022.

Conversion data shows strong growth for January

A look at converted visits for the five largest cruise operators in the U.S. shows that Royal Caribbean actually leads the peer group in terms of website visits that lead to a sale. They had nearly 41k converted visits in January 2023, a growth of 125% over the prior year.

Carnival came in second with 32k converted visits (growth of 49%, year over year), followed by NCL with 14.5k converted visits (growth of 23%), Princess with 9k converted visits (a decline of 21%, the only peer in this group that saw a decline) and Celebrity with 7k converted visits (growth of 92%).

As a group in the aggregate, these five peers saw converted visits growth up 55% in January 2023, year over year.

Web traffic and conversion growth indicative of strong demand

Cruises were among the last travel-related businesses to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, and the group was shut down for over a year, while hotels and airlines continued to operate. We think there is significant pent-up demand for cruises that are driving higher traffic. There are also a few new ships coming into service including Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas (not yet in service), which is driving increased excitement and fueling booking demand for other Royal Caribbean and other ships.

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Methodology

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