邮轮：谁在掀起波澜？最佳邮轮品牌是什么？

When looking at the cruise industry it is easy to get caught up in short term utilization andyield metrics, and view units of capacity as homogenous, forgetting about the underlyingbrands and market segments. This is not helped by limited brand by brand disclosure fromcruise companies, and little industry data reporting on chain scale performance. However,taking such a restrictive view is a mistake — brands in cruise are important, as evidenced bythe recent efforts from Carnival to pull back from underperforming brands such as Costaand focus on their best performing, highest returning, Carnival and AIDA brands. Herewe replicate an analysis of review scores we ran on hotel brands (Hotels: Performancereview — Tracking 10 million Google Reviews) for the cruise industry, and analyze more than200,000 cruise reviews from Tripadvisor’s CruiseCritic website to crown the most lovedbrands.Royal Caribbean has a firm lead in the Mainstream segments, and is among thebest in the Premium segment.The ‘Royal Caribbean’ brand dominates the Mainstreamsegment, with a 3.8 average guest score across more than 43,000 reviews, well abovethe next highest brand in the category. The brand has largely been consistent across shipclasses, aside from the Quantum / Quantum Ultra class ships, which have been relativelyless popular — likely driving a return to the Oasis class and the recent launches of the Iconclass ships. RCL’s ‘Celebrity’ brand also competes at the top of the Premium segment, justbehind the Virgin Voyages (private) brand, and slightly ahead of Disney cruises (covered byBernstein’s Laurent Yoon), with all 3 receiving an average rating of 4. The Luxury Silverseabrand is the weakest relative to its competitive set.Carnival’s brands are mixed.The Carnival brand does relatively well in the Mainstreamsegment, but Costa is notably poor, while P&O also lags other brands in the category.This discrepancy likely explains the switch of 2 Costa ships to the Carnival brand across2022-2024, and aligns with commentary from Carnival that the Carnival and AIDA brandsdeliver the highest ROIC. In the Premium segment Carnival brands do not comparefavorably with Princess cruises receiving the lowest review score in the segment.The Luxury segment faces the most competition.To the incumbent players (RoyalCaribbean, Celebrity, and Norwegian (uncovered)), the competition is the fiercest inthe Luxury segment, with Viking (uncovered) exceptionally strong in the category, whileAzamara and Windstar (both private) also perform well. The Premium segment also hassome clear challengers, with the newer Virgin Voyages brand clearly having some successwith guests (by targeting different demographics, and focusing on a differentiated F&Band entertainment offering), while Disney’s family entertainment focus has been verysuccessful. The mainstream segment faces relatively fewer smaller scale players, withscaled players Royal, Carnival and Norwegian dominating the category.www.bernsteinresearch.com BERNSTEIN TICKER TABLETickerRatingCCL.LNMCCLMRCLOTRIPOTUI1.GRMEDMSPXO - Outperform, M - Market-Perform, U - Underperform, NR - Not Rated, CS - Coverage SuspendedSource: Bloomberg, Bernstein estimates and analysis.INVESTMENT IMPLICATIONSWe remain positive on the long term outlook for the cruise industry, expecting a moderating and more predictable supplyoutlook, and steady demand growth ahead of supply supported by an aging population, demographic expansion, strong valuefor money relative to land based options, and an improving product. We see RCL as the best way to play the industry outlook —with this analysis supporting a push towards differentiated ship hardware has helped it evolve past competitors, combined withan effective private destination strategy driving yield accretive capacity growth (Royal Caribbean: Not your grandfather's cruise -top pick for H2).GLOBAL HOTELS & LEISURE 2 DETAILSWHAT WE DIDWe took the guest review scores, number of reviews, and expert score from the ‘Cruise Critic’ website for the cruise lines listedon the website. This encompassed more than 200 thousand guest reviews across 955 different cruise ships, with 430 expertreview scores.We then looked across the major ocean cruise brands, and for those with a sufficient number of reviews across their ships (10 ormore) we compared the average review score. We grouped these brands across 3 categories:•Mainstream— The core cruise product with a good level of service, some specialty dining options, and appeal to a broad setof cruisers, with a wider variety of onboard activities.•Premium— Premium cruise brands typically offer step up from mainstream cruise lines in the standard of accommodation,food, and service, and tend to focus on a more upscale exclusive experience. These cruise brands tend to go to slightlymore exotic or unique locations. We have also included Disney here, with the family oriented brand pricing at a premium tomainstream, and stepping up in its entertainment offering.•Luxury