By Megan Graham
Carnival Corp. is generating more profit and revenue, commanding record-high prices in North America and Europe, and continuing to see strong bookings, executives said this week as the cruise ship operator reported results for its latest quarter. Its juiced-up marketing play is helping.
Boosting promotion for the company's destinations will help Carnival win more customers, Chief Executive Josh Weinstein said on an earnings call with analysts .
"By making targeted, incremental investments and stepping up our marketing efforts to support this broad destination portfolio," Weinstein said, "we believe we have further opportunity to monetize these strategic assets by using them to drive consumer consideration and conversion, taking share from land-based alternatives altogether."
Carnival, which owns brands such as Carnival Cruise Line and Princess Cruises, plans to begin a new marketing campaign just ahead of the next "wave season," he added, using industry parlance for the highly competitive period from January through March when the cruise industry offers its best rates for the year ahead.
Carnival's Holland America line also said Wednesday that it will have its first float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade next month to promote its Alaska cruises.
Major marketing pushes are only one tool helping it maintain high pricing, the company said in a statement, along with factors including capacity growth, and growing consumer demand, new ships and modernizations and more word-of-mouth recommendations among consumers. Its new destination on Grand Bahama Island, Celebration Key, is driving some of that buzz, according to Carnival.
But Carnival's investment in advertising is yielding significant returns, stimulating demand with the launch of several new campaigns during its peak season, analysts from Zacks Equity Research said in a research note last month, before the latest results.
The company has historically underinvested in advertising compared with its competitors, and has a chance to sharpen its brand and strengthen its pricing power with more spending, J.P. Morgan analysts said in an equity research note this week.
The cruise business has proved resilient in the face of economic and geopolitical uncertainty. But the times may make destinations like Celebration Key more crucial than before.
Credit and debit card data "shows that Carnival is most dependent on lower income consumers among the major cruise players," said Michael Gunther, vice president and head of insights at Consumer Edge, a firm that analyzes purchase data from card transactions, receipts and point-of-sale systems. "So it's especially important to offer new attractions and generate buzz as lower income households increasingly manage their discretionary expenditures."
Write to Megan Graham at megan.graham@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 01, 2025 17:08 ET (21:08 GMT)
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