Of eight Carnival Corporation cruise brands, Carnival Cruise Line and AIDA Cruises are the stars atop an internal leaderboard, said Josh Weinstein, CEO, speaking on the company’s third quarter earnings call.
Weinstein said the company had been careful deploying capital towards its highest returning brands, which is why only Carnival and AIDA have newbuilds on order.
“But keep in mind, we have many other brands that are quickly progressing up the internal leaderboard. This year, the overwhelming majority of capacity will be at brands delivering double-digit returns,” said Weinstein.
“In fact, several of our brands are not yet back to either 2019 levels or the record highs they’ve reached in the past two decades. So we know the latent potential they have.”
“We have rationalized,” continued Weinstein later on the call, commenting on the company’s portfolio of brands.
Alongside AIDA and Carnival, company owned brands include Costa, Holland America Line, Princess, Cunard, Seabourn and P&O UK.
“We have rightsized many of our brands that needed rightsizing and the progress is good, and we’ll continue to support the brands that need a little bit more help than others to keep pushing up the ranks,” Weinstein continued.
Among the rightsized brands are Costa, which sold off ships during the pandemic, exited the Asia market and transferred three ships to the Carnival Cruise Line brand in the Luminosa, Venezia and Firenze.
“I’m ecstatic that as amazingly as Carnival and AIDA have been doing over the last couple of years, they got to look over their shoulder because there’s some that are coming on fast,” added Weinstein.