Carnival Corp & plc, the Anglo American cruise shipping group that is the largest company in the business, earlier this week reported strong third quarter financial year 2013-14 interims.
Group President and Chief Executive Officer Arnold Donald said in a statement: “Strong close-in demand and higher onboard spending helped drive significantly better than expected third quarter results and 15 percent year-over-year earnings improvement.”
“Our Asia operations performed particularly well during the quarter, driven by a double-digit yield increase in our China program, further solidifying our industry leading presence in this important emerging cruise market. “
“Our continental European operations also enjoyed strong yield and profit improvement in the quarter, reflecting continued progress for the Costa brand.”
“In addition, our summer Caribbean product successfully attracted nearly 20 percent more guests than the prior year, reinforcing the popularity of the world’s largest cruising region,” Donald added.
In our opinion, the continued recovery of the Costa Crociere brand from the aftermath of the sinking of Costa Concordia in 2012 is particularly encouraging, given the challenging business environment in Continental Europe, which is a key source market for the company.
Donald’s upbeat comments regarding China, where Costa also operates, produced the second very encouraging news. The continued growth of the Chinese market is very important not only for the Carnival group, but also for Royal Caribbean Cruises Limited (RCCL), the industry’s number two and also Star Cruises whose home market is in the Far East.
This is good news also for MSC Cruises and Norwegian Cruise Line. As Genting Hong Kong group that owns Star cruises on which it wants to concentrate its cruise operations, continues to reduce its stake in Norwegian, we think the rapidly expanding Norwegian brand will also want to gain foothold in China in the future. The recent acquisition of Prestige Cruise Holdings paves the way for such a move.
