Royal Caribbean Cruises and NCL — the second and third-largest US cruiseship owners, respectively, behind Carnival Corp — have revealed signs of optimism for next year as they delivered better-than-expected quarterly earnings growth, even as competitive pressures in the key Caribbean market continue to impact their 2014 numbers.
The aggressiveness of Royal Caribbean’s just-unveiled profitability programme suggests the Miami-headquartered cruise operator may expect to deliver lower expenses next year, even though executives decline to provide the market with an outlook on costs, says UBS’s Robin Farley, a leading analyst covering the cruise sector.
The
