Royal Caribbean Group said the demand had been surging in the recent past and by the end of this year, 50 of its 61 ships should have returned to service. The company should generate a profit next year, it said in a statement.

“Although there are many uncertainties going forward regarding COVID-19, as well as cost and supply chain pressures, we continue our pathway forward and anticipate positive cash flow for the Group by spring of 2022 and generating positive earnings for the full year 2022," said Jason T. Liberty, Executive Vice President and CFO.

The company said it anticipated load factors on core itineraries to ramp to 65-70% during the fourth quarter.  “The Company anticipates 6.9 million (available passenger capacity days) APCDs for the fourth quarter with overall load factors of 60-65%,” it said.

“The Group expects all ships on core itineraries in the fourth quarter will be cash flow accretive even when including start-up costs.  By the end of the year, the Group expects that 50 out of 61 ships will have returned to service, representing almost 100% of core itinerary capacity and approximately 80% of worldwide capacity,” it said.

The remaining ships should return by the spring of 2022 and return to historical load factors in the third quarter 2022. “Mainland China is expected to resume in the spring and we have assumed lower load factors as this important long term market ramps up,” the company stated.

At the end of September, the company had approximately $2.8 billion in customer deposits, while the comparable figure for the three brands at the same time in 2019 was $3.1 billion.

“This represents an improvement of about $400 million over the past quarter despite the $300 million of revenue that was recognized during the quarter,’ Royal Caribbean said.  

“Approximately 35% of the customer deposit balance is related to future cruise credits (FCC)s compared to 40% in the prior quarter; a positive trend indicating new demand.  Customer deposits for second quarter 2022 forward sailings are higher than at the same time in 2019,”it pointed out.