It’s the cruise industry’s peak booking season, but skittish potential passengers can’t forget the photographs of the Costa Concordia lying semi-sumerged off the coast of Italy.
Carnival and Royal Caribbean cruise lines, which make up 73 percent of the industry, last week both reported dougle-digit declines in bookings so far this year in light of the Jan. 13 disaster that left at least 17 dead after the ship struck rocks and ran aground.
The incident came at a particularly bad time for the industry — the period between January and March, known as "wave season," is when cruise companies offer discounts and packages to fill up their ships for the rest of the year.
Carnival expects to lose between $155 million and $175 million this year, according to a regulatory statement filed last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Booking volumes fleetwide, excluding the Costa brand but including liners like Princess and Holland America, declined "in the mid-teens" as of Jan. 25, compared to the prior year, and bottomed out Jan. 16, Carnival said. Costa’s booking activity is difficult to interpret because of passengers who were rebooked on other trips. However, Carnival said, "we believe it to be down significantly." - Read More
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