Yes, cruise prices are up: Here's why cheap sailings may be harder to find
Even with the busy summer travel season behind us, cheap cruises may be harder to find.
As cruise line operators report continued high demand, prices have been creeping up, and they’ve been heading that way for a while.
“Pricing has been going up for over a year,” Stephanie Goldberg-Glazer, chief experience officer and owner of the travel agency Live Well, Travel Often, said in an email. “Cruising still represents a great value in travel and we have not seen a decrease in interest or in bookings.”
But that doesn’t mean thrifty travelers are out of luck. Here’s what to know:
Why are cruises more expensive?
While travelers’ healthy appetite for vacations at sea may be a driving force behind the price hikes, Goldberg-Glazer said there are others too.
“There are a lot of factors – cost of goods and labor has gone up, so the cruise lines are seeing higher operating costs,” she said. “Combined with very high demand, that often leads to increases.”
Carnival Corp., which operates the largest number of cruises from the U.S., saw third-quarter revenue and earnings that exceeded expectations, driven by strong demand.
“We've consistently been delivering prices well in excess of 2019 levels while closing the occupancy gap by 11 (percentage) points over the course of the year,” president and CEO Josh Weinstein said in a September earnings call. The company’s brands include Carnival Cruise Line, Princess Cruises and Holland America Line.
That trend could continue. “We are well positioned to drive 2024 pricing higher, with less inventory remaining to sell than the same time last year, despite a capacity increase of 5%,” the company’s CFO David Bernstein added during the call.
Those remarks echoed an update from Royal Caribbean Group earlier this year. “Booking volumes in the second quarter remained significantly higher than the corresponding period in 2019 and at record pricing levels,” the company, which operates lines like Royal Caribbean International and Celebrity Cruises, said in a July news release.
How expensive are cruises?
Cumulative cruise prices for 2024 are up between approximately 17.5% and 22.5% from 2019, Patrick Scholes, a lodging and leisure analyst with Truist Securities, said in a report last month. Pricing for 2025 is even higher, up around 50%.
“We note that higher-end cruises tend to have longer booking windows, which skews the pricing numbers higher at the moment vs. where we believe they will eventually finish,” he wrote.
Looking for cheap cruises?: Here's what to know know about finding deals
Can I still find affordable cruises?
Maybe. Even as prices have risen, Goldberg-Glazer said guests can still find bargains. “We work with all the cruise lines and while the most popular sailings and the high-end suites are typically going up, we can usually find great deals when our clients are a little flexible,” she said.
She recommended working with a travel adviser who can help you track those down. There are also sites like Cruisewatch, which record price changes for sailing itineraries.
Keeping an open mind about sailing dates, in particular, will also give travelers a better shot at finding a reasonable fare. If passengers are locked into a school schedule, they will have more limited choices.
“The more options you have, the easier it is to find better deals,” Goldberg-Glazer said.
Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville. You can reach him at ndiller@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Cruise prices are up, but there are still deals
