Andrea Zelinski
This year's Wave season is proving to be a "strong" one, with pricing up and a nine-month booking curve stretching two months longer than it had pre-pandemic.
That's according to Patrick Scholes, an analyst from Truist Securities who closely follows the cruise industry and its trends.
Scholes told me in an interview Feb. 20 that prices are in the mid-high single digits above rates from this time last year, which is "very strong for an industry that has extremely high fixed costs. That's excellent pricing power."
In another trend, he's noticed over the last two years that cruise lines have pulled the start of Wave season into the holiday season -- perhaps even further than many realize. "Wave season is almost beginning at Halloween now," he said. "You're pulling forward some of that demand that normally would have been booked in, say, January."
The result is that the industry is seeing "very strong" Novembers and Decembers for bookings, Scholes said. But after the turn of the year, there's not as much to book.
That's made the focus of this the 2025 Wave season a bit more about pricing, he said.
"It's a little bit more about pricing growth as opposed to getting your occupancy up to where you would like it to be," he said.
Several advisors and heads of large agencies have echoed those same observations, telling me that they have seen growing but softer than expected demand in the first month of the year.
But the big trend from this year's Wave season is strong pricing, Scholes and agents told me. And due to the combination of strong pricing and having a lot of 2025 business already on the books, many agency executives told me they are poised to break 2024 revenue records.
There's still more to learn about this year's Wave season, and it's arguably not done yet. Royal Caribbean Group is the only publicly traded cruise line to publicly comment on Wave season performance. Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and Lindblad are up next with their earnings calls set for Feb. 27, followed by Viking and Carnival Corp. in the coming weeks.