Who Is The Biggest Cruise Line?

At the end of 2018 the total world wide cruise industry was estimated at $45.6 billion which was a 4.6% increase on 2017, with 26 million passengers travelling which was a 3.2% increase on 2017. So I thought it be interesting to find out which individual cruise line carried the most passengers by market share but also what market share they had revenue wise.

Below are the Top 10 for market share for passengers and revenue.

% of Market Share for passengers                                          % of Market Share of revenue

1. Carnival 22.0%                                                                        1. Royal Caribbean 14.0%

2. Royal Caribbean 19.2%                                                         2. Princess Cruises  9.1%

3. Norwegian Cruise Line 8.7%                                                3. Carnival 8.9%

4. MSC Cruises 7.2%                                                                  4. Norwegian Cruise Line 8.4%

5. Princess Cruises 6.4%                                                           5. MSC Cruises 6.8%

6. Costa Cruises 6%                                                                   6. Holland America Line 5.6%

7. AIDA 4.6%                                                                               7. Celebrity Cruises 5.3%

8. Celebrity Cruises 3.5%                                                          8. Costa Cruises 4.8%

9. Holland America Line 3.2%                                                  9. AIDA 4.6%

10. P&O Cruises 2.4%                                                               10. Oceania Cruises 2.3%

Surprising???

What was interesting was when you look into the individual cruise lines market share of passengers and revenue. The biggest surprise to me was that Carnival Cruise Line on it’s own has a 22.0% share of the market on passengers, but only an 8.9% share of the market on revenue. This is probably down to as most of the cruise ships being home ported in the USA and shorter cruises appealing to the younger and fun US market, prices per cruise a lot cheaper compared to cruise other lines.

Cruise lines such as Princess Cruises, Holland America Line and Celebrity Cruises  may have a lower market share of passengers of 13.1% combined but they accounted for 20.0% of the market revenue share combined. But the biggest difference in relation from passenger share to revenue was the likes of the 6 Star ships of Regent Seven Seas, Oceania, Crystal, Silverseas and Seabourn Cruises they only have 1.4% passenger market share combined but account for 8.5% revenue of market share – a whopping 6 times the amount.

What do you think, would you have guessed those as the top 10 – Did those figures surprise you?

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