Cruise Itinerary Pricing Patterns

Hi all, today's post will take a look into some of the larger pricing trends we are seeing (from brochure rates).  I've been wanting to do a post like this for a while because, while few cruisers pay brochure rates, those rates still represent the relative costs they are expecting to see, and adjust prices later as bookings follow patterns, or not.

So a few questions I wanted to answer by digging into the data for North American itineraries and normalizing the rates on a "per day" basis and assuming double occupancy.:

1. Do passengers pay a premium to cruise on newer ships?  In this example, I'll be checking to see if the Royal/Regal command a premium, on a per day basis, over other ships.
2. Which itineraries command a premium?
3. Just how big, typically, is the holiday time markup?

To answer these, I took brochure rates for what Princess Cruises deems as 2018 and 2019 North American voyages (Coastal, Mexico, Hawaii, Caribbean, and Panama Canal).  I then normalized the rates to a "per day" cost and performed some analytical calculations in Excel as well as used pivot tables.  Finally, I filtered down to 7 day voyages only.  This effectively eliminated Hawaii and Panama Canal cruises.

So question 1 - do we pay more to cruise on the newest ships?

So the first graph will attempt to answer by average cost per day for all cabins, by ship.  But first a disclaimer on the data.  The Golden has only 1 voyage listed in the North America catalog for the date ranges we have access to so it was removed.  Additionally, the Pacific was removed because it has a few World Cruise segments that skew the averages quite a bit.

Zone	Ship	Daily INSIDE Avg	Daily BALCONY Avg	Daily MINISUITE Avg
Caribbean	CARIBBEAN	$132.00	$210.57	$246.28
Caribbean	REGAL	$132.97	$201.81	$238.82
Caribbean	ROYAL	$132.72	$201.29	$239.86
Caribbean Average		$132.65	$204.08	$241.09
Coastal	GRAND	$107.00	$149.86	$207.00
Coastal	ISLAND	$99.86	$157.00	$214.14
Coastal	ROYAL	$114.14	$142.71	$199.86
Coastal	RUBY	$107.00	$149.86	$207.00
Coastal	STAR	$108.43	$151.28	$208.43
Coastal Average		$107.00	$150.96	$208.10
Mexico	ROYAL	$133.19	$166.52	$209.38
Mexico	RUBY	$114.14	$157.00	$199.86
Mexico	STAR	$115.79	$166.34	$212.49
Mexico Average		$120.93	$165.93	$210.93

So question 1 appears to be true for inside cabins, however for other cabins, its sometimes the opposite.

Question 2 - Which itineraries command a premium?

Well, for this one it was pretty much looking at the aggregated numbers from above and as you might expect, the Caribbean, then Mexico, and finally Coastals were the least expensive on a per day basis.  However the jump from inside to balcony on Caribbean voyages was less on a percentage basis than the coastals or mexican itineraries.

Zone	Daily INSIDE Avg	% To Next	Daily BALCONY Avg	% to Next	Daily MINISUITE AVG
Caribbean	$132.65	65%	$204.08	84.6%	$241.09
Coastal	$107.00	70.9%	$208.10	72.5%	$208.10
Mexico	$120.93	72.9%	$210.93	78.7%	$210.93

Question 3 - How big, typically, is the holiday time markup?

We tried to really hone in on the data to minimize irregularities so we filtered the data town to just 7 day Caribbean voyages.  As you probably would expect, there is a markup near the holidays around 30% for Minisuites, and a bit less for Balcony and Inside cabins.  Then there is trail off of rates until February where it stabilizes.

That's it for this post.  Do you have some questions you've wondered about pricing of cruises?  Leave a note in the comments and we will see if we can answer it.  Happy sailing!