Retired couple spent almost 500 days at sea after booking 51 straight cruises because it’s cheaper than retirement homeThis secret cruising hack will save you big time on your next vacayPopular cruise operators Carnival and Royal Caribbean have set some ticket prices even higher than they were pre-pandemic — more than 40%, according to one closely watched monitor — and prices could continue to climb, according to industry experts.
Coming out of the pandemic, “cruising was always going to be the last one people realized was safe or not,” hence why people were quick to “realize that airline tickets and land-based resorts have gotten more expensive,” but “the ocean’s just now rising,” said former Carnival executive Carlos Torres de Navarra.December tickets for five-day cruises to the Caribbean are, on average, $736 per traveler — a whopping 43% higher than the same time in 2019, according to Cruise Critic.
“If the cruising experience was impaired coming out of the pandemic, then I think there would have been a different concern,” de Navarra said. “Clearly, that’s not a concern.”This group — which de Navarro referred to as the “first-timer market” has opened up an “additional audience that demand gives cruise lines the ability to start raising prices,” de Navarro said.
Historically, cruise lines have spent as much as $500 million to build ports that they believe will generate demand. “The cruise industry started getting outside of its core business of cruise experience and got into destination experience,” de Navarro said.