Thinking about booking one of your first trips Royal CaribbeanIcon of the Sea coming soon? You better act quickly. And bring a bunch of money.
It is becoming one of the hottest tickets in the history of cruises.
“That ship is truly the best-selling product in the history of our business,” Royal Caribbean CEO Michael Bayley said Tuesday on a conference call with Wall Street analysts. “It’s completely outpacing the demand and the price we’re generating.”
While it’s still 11 months away from the new Icon of the Seas launch — its maiden voyage won’t happen until January 2024 — it’s been pre-booking at lightning speed and with sky-high prices arriving. that it has a significant impact on the entire line’s outlook for next year, Bayley suggests.
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2024 “seems very healthy and the big driver of that is Icon,” Bayley said on the conference call, which came after Royal Caribbean’s parent company, Royal Caribbean Group, reported fourth-quarter earnings.
Royal Caribbean fans have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Icon of the Seas — at 250,600 tons, the largest cruise ship ever built — for years.
First announced in 2016 and currently under construction at a shipyard in Finland, the 20-deck tall vessel will be the first of a new class in Royal Caribbean — the company’s first new class in a row. nearly a decade.
Thanks in part to the extra space from the larger size, it will also be filled with new Royal Caribbean attractions and locations, as well as new cabin types. That got Royal Caribbean fans excited — and paid to be one of the first to try it out.
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Related: TPG’s ultimate guide to Icon of the Seas . attractions, locations, and cabins
Bayley notes that one of the top suites on Icon of the Seas, its three-story Ultimate Family Townhouse, has sold 55% for all of 2024 with an average price of $75,000 a week — or $10,714 la a day.
It’s an example of what Bayley says are the “remarkable statistics” the line has seen since the ship went on sale – the kind of prices that only the top-of-the-line suites on high-end luxury ships have seen. Newest price.
“You can just sense the kind of demand that’s being created” from those numbers, Bayley said.
Royal Caribbean begins taking reservations for the ship maiden voyage just a few months ago, at the end of October. As TPG wrote back then, many cabins on its maiden voyage sold out within a few hours.
Icon of the Seas’ maiden voyage, a seven-night trip from Miami to the Eastern Caribbean, is scheduled for January 27, 2024.
The ship will depart year-round from Miami in 2024, alternating between Eastern Caribbean and Western Caribbean itineraries, with four different routes available for departures January 2024 through April 2025.
Related: Royal Caribbean Ultimate Guide
When completed, Icon of the Seas will have two more passenger decks compared to the 10-month-old ship that is leading the way in terms of scale in the yachting world. Wonders of the Sea.
It will also be slightly longer than Wonder of the Sea, 1,198 feet long — 10 feet longer than Wonder of the Sea.
But its biggest difference may be the number of passengers it will serve. Its maximum capacity will be 7,600, about 7% higher than Wonder of the Seas’ maximum capacity of 7,084 passengers.
The larger passenger capacity is partly due to the ship’s greater focus on family travellers. Icon of the Seas is under construction with more cabins with extra bunk beds to accommodate families with kids. It will also feature more family amenities, including a new outdoor family “neighborhood” called Surfside.
Related: Icon of the Seas will serve families
Targeted at families with young children, Surfside will feature play areas for infants and young children, swimming pools and lounges for parents, family-friendly eateries and shops, and a counter. bar with mocktails suitable for “mom and me” for kids and cocktails for adults.
Royal Caribbean is the largest cruise line in the world, with 26 vessels accommodating more than 94,000 people, based on double occupancy per cabin. It has long operated most of the world’s largest cruise ships.
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