Traffic to Major Cruise Line Websites Up 26.5% Year-over-Year

Across its worldwide brands, Carnival attracted 23.5% more traffic in July, and Norwegian was up 36%.

Cruise lines have been getting attention as one of the best stories in the travel business, even if some analysts say their appeal is partly in contrast to low expectations. Reuters reports overall travel demand remains strong, even in segments where prices have been rising. Companies like cruise lines that focus on leisure travel have been seeing robust demand, even as business travel has been slow to come back.

The next earnings report from Carnival Corp. (NYSE CCL) is expected at the end of September, including results through the end of August, and we’ve given the company some extra attention in this report. In addition to Carnival Cruise Lines, the company owns Princess, Holland America, Cunard, and Costa, among others.

Royal Caribbean, which also owns Celebrity Cruises, and Norwegian Cruise Lines reported strong earnings in July. Disney Cruise Line’s performance was also a bright spot in Disney’s latest earnings, offsetting some gloom about its media and entertainment businesses.

We monitor traffic to cruise websites as a topline indicator of demand, seeing good news there for Carnival and others, even as Carnival struggles with other issues like a heavy debt load.

Key takeaways

• Based on traffic to websites of the major multi-brand cruise lines, plus a few others like MSC and Virgin, overall cruise line traffic was up 26.5% year-over-year in July. Traffic was also up 9% compared with June.
• Combined traffic to the websites of Carnival-owned properties was up 23.5% year-over-year. The parent Carnival Cruise Lines’ carnival.com website saw 8.4% growth, but its second most-trafficked site, princess.com, was up 53%, and several of its smaller brands saw even faster growth, with P&O (pocruises.com) up 58.8%.
• Royal Caribbean, the second biggest cruise conglomerate, grew traffic by 20%, with royalcaribbean.com up 13%, celebritycruises.com up 30%, and a relatively small brand silversea.com up 73%.
• Norwegian Cruise Lines traffic grew by 36% year-over-year in July, with most of that growth coming from its primary ncl.com brand.
• Small but fast-growing Virgin Voyages grew traffic to virginvoyages.com by 41.8% year-over-year in July.

Princess, Virgin Voyages, NCL, and Celebrity stand out as fast-growing brands

Here are the brands we’ve been tracking consistently across our previous reports.

Overall cruise line traffic has been growing steadily

Here is what the overall pattern looks like, based on the sum of traffic to the domains of the major cruise lines.

Carnival is the biggest, having rolled up the most brands

In addition to the family fun-oriented Carnival, Carnival Corp. owns many brands that appeal to different tastes including Princess (“The Love Boat”) and Cunard, operator of the Queen Mary 2.

Here’s where the strongest growth is coming from within that family of websites.

By digital measures, Carnival and other cruise lines are doing well

Success in the cruise business depends on many factors that extend beyond the digital world, including shipbuilding and cruise port politics, debt, and demographics (cater to retirees or attract younger people?). The spring “wave season” is also often considered a better time to do business than the summer. Yet maintaining digital demand is important for every business, and summertime bookings help fill empty summertime berths and attract customers for sailings later in the year.

The demand is there, and that’s a good start.

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Methodology

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