Carnival Corporation has reported a global bookings decline in the “mid teens” while Costa sales are down “significantly” following the Concordia tragedy last month.
In a regulatory filing, the cruise giant admitted the impact had been felt in the 12 days after the grounding but predicted there would be no long term damage to its business.
“Excluding Costa our fleetwide booking volumes subsequent to the incident through January 25 declined in the mid teens compared to the prior year,” Carnival said.
Costa’s slump was more difficult to determine because of “re-booking activity stemming from the loss of the ship’s use and related redeployments”.
“However, we believe it to be down significantly,” the filing revealed. “Despite these recent trends we believe the incident will not have a significant long term impact on our business.”
Carnival said it self insures for the loss of ships which will impact the 2012 full year net income by US$85 million to $95m with other related costs mounting to US$30m to $40m.
Carnival also said it expects to face additional financial hits including lower net revenue yields “that are not possible to reasonably determine at this time.”
A damage assessment is being carried out to see if the ship can be repaired.
Meanwhile, the search for victims has been called off with at least a dozen still missing. A total of 17 bodies have been recovered.
A number of class actions are set to be launched against the cruise line.
