Josh Weinstein
President, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Climate Officer at Carnival Co. &
Thank you, Beth. Before I begin, I would like to express my support and heartfelt sympathy for all those impacted by yesterday's event at the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore and extend our appreciation to the Coast Guard and all first responders. The city and the Port of Baltimore have been our long-time partners and a home to many loyal guests, as well as business and community colleagues.
We proudly sail year round out of Baltimore through one of our Carnival Cruise Line ships, which was scheduled to return this weekend. Fortunately, our team has quickly secured a temporary homeport in Norfolk for as long as it's needed, which should help to minimize operational changes. So we look forward to getting back to our home in Baltimore as soon as possible.
Now, given that this happened just yesterday and the situation is fluid, we did not build this into our earnings materials or full year guidance. However, we did provide a current perspective that we expect this situation to have less than a $10 million impact on a full year guidance.
With that, I'll turn to our prepared remarks, which address the accomplishments included in our strong results and outlook. The first quarter has been fantastic across the board and yet another set of records. We delivered record revenues, record bookings and record customer deposits again this quarter, a great start to the year.
I want to acknowledge our global team right off the bat. Everyone has worked very hard to deliver another strong quarter in a very strong way. In fact, we outperformed our first quarter guidance on every measure, yields, cruise cost ex fuel, and EBITDA, enabling us to take our expectations up for the full year.
Yields increased over 17% year-over-year, another record, and more than double the increase in unit costs. This was driven not only by closing the occupancy gap, but also through solid mid-single-digit price increases.
Customer deposits beat last year's record by another $1.3 billion, contributing to our strong cash flow and enabling us to prepay another $1.8 billion of debt already this year, which is on top of the $4 billion we prepaid last year. This is meaningful progress on our return to investment-grade credit.
Most important, we achieved all-time high booking volumes at considerably higher prices. In fact, our North American and European brands both set booking records in the first quarter, with pricing strong across all core deployments and across all quarters. Prices ran up double digits on limited inventory left for Q2. They ran considerably higher for our peak summer period, Q3. And they were also considerably higher for Q4 while still building on our occupancy advantage.
Our record book position and activity did not just happen, and it is not the result of pent-up demand from repeat guests built up during the pause, which is now years in the rearview mirror. It is because we have been creating more consideration and broad-based demand for cruise travel in all of our source markets across our well-balanced portfolio. And as a result, we are capturing more new guests than ever before, which coupled with our growing base of repeat guests, delivers greater overall demand. Our brands are delivering sustainable revenue growth that hits the bottom line.
At the same time, our brands are continuing to pull the booking curve forward in line with our yield management strategy to baseload bookings and ultimately support higher overall pricing over the course of the booking curve. As you know, before even entering the year, we already had the best book position on record with less 2024 inventory remaining for sale after absorbing double-digit guest growth, half of which was from closing the occupancy gap and half from higher ship capacity.
Those efforts have enabled us to maintain price integrity on the remaining '24 inventory and sets us up nicely to deliver a nearly double-digit improvement in yields this year. This also allowed us to focus more of our efforts through wave on further out bookings, helping to lay the foundation for an early build 2025. It is remarkable that we are even better positioned now for 2025 than we were last year at this time, heading into what is shaping up to be a phenomenal 2024.
To aid in that effort, we have been rolling out enhancement to YODA, our yield management tool designed to facilitate an even more optimal booking curve and which will continue to pay dividends well into the future. Of course, we have more in the pipeline to sustain our momentum and capitalize on this untapped revenue opportunity.
For instance, we have three fantastic new ships driving increased consideration and demand to their respective brands. Carnival Jubilee, Carnival Cruise Line's third excel-class ship was recently christened by Gwen Stefani at her inaugural home port in Galveston, Texas.
Sun Princess was recently delivered, the first of its class and a real game changer for Princess. And soon to be delivered is Queen Anne, a new flagship for Cunard and its first new ship in 14 years. Of course, as you've heard me say before, we do not need new ships to increase yield as we continue to position our brands to drive demand in excess of supply and address the unreasonable value gap to land-based alternatives.
We are also continuing to invest in the existing fleet with AIDA Evolution, the largest modernization program in that brand's history. The planned enhancements to the guest experience are designed to deliver a meaningful revenue uplift across the brand while further reducing its environmental footprint and bolster the performance of one of our highest returning brands.
And speaking of brands that truly outperform, we are also continuing to strategically invest in growth for Carnival Cruise Line. Celebration Key, our exclusive destination purpose-built for that brand's target guest, is really starting to capture the imagination as they launched a new marketing campaign right in the heart of wave season. Although early days, Celebration Key is already delivering an initial halo for bookings in the second half of 2025 across 18 Carnival Cruise Line ships departing from 10 homeports.
We also announced the second phase of development for Celebration Key with a pier extension that can birth two additional ships in future years, further leveraging what will be a best-in-class asset for us. We expect ticket revenue uplift from this incredible destination as the guest experience delivers unmatched funds as well as incremental in-port spending. And this will be coupled with cost benefits driven by considerable fuel savings as it will be the closest destination of our seven owned and operated ports in the Caribbean.
This destination is designed to support the continued growth plan for Carnival Cruise Line, including the two recently announced additions to its highly successful excel-class for delivery in 2027 and 2028.
All of these investments demonstrate our disciplined capital allocation strategy. We continue to prioritize our investments towards our highest returning brands and biggest opportunities. This includes investments to reduce our carbon footprint, which will not only have a measurable impact on the environment, but also improve our bottom line.
Our strategic investment in advertising is also paying dividends, driving demand across our portfolio with several new campaigns launched during winter. In fact, our web visits are up over a very strong 2023 with increases in both natural search and paid search. We increased our advertising efforts around our strategic foothold in Alaska. Alaska has long been the lifeblood for both Princess and Holland America, and they have launched new campaigns to build even greater awareness for our unmatched land/sea [Phonetic] experiences.
This initiative isn't just U.S. based. We have stepped up our marketing efforts across Europe with new campaigns for all our major European brands. AIDA's new campaign, experience yourself differently, launched in Germany to rave reviews. P&O Cruises' new campaign, holiday like never before, really hit home with its British guest face. And Costa's newly released campaign, focusing on moments where guests are left speechless, has been met with much success in its core markets of Italy, France and Spain.
These campaigns have contributed to the continued strength of our European brands, which has been a meaningful driver of our improved outlook. It is particularly rewarding to see our European brands flexing their muscles across their core European deployments. It is a real testament to the strength of our portfolio.
The outperformance we've experienced this quarter has been a continuation of the strong demand we've been experiencing for all of our core deployments. The Caribbean, Alaska and Europe have all helped deliver over 1 point of incremental yield improvement. This more than offsets the impact of the Red Sea rerouting as well as changes in the price of fuel and currency exchange rates since our last update. It has also enabled us to raise our full year guidance for EBITDA and net income.
Our improving operational performance, coupled with excess liquidity and the lowest order book in decades, leaves us well positioned to continue to opportunistically manage down debt and interest expense, while reducing the complexity of our capital structure. This is very much aligned with our return to investment-grade credit over time. And our treasury team has been quick to capitalize on this trajectory with an ongoing stream of well-executed transactions to strengthen our balance sheet.
With the vast majority of this year's business now booked, we have even more conviction in delivering record revenues and EBITDA, along with a step change improvement in operating performance lasting well beyond 2024. While we continue to optimize yield on the limited inventory we have remaining and still manage down costs, we have been turning more of our attention to delivering an even stronger 2025. We're gaining traction on improvements across the commercial space along our path of continued margin enhancement and increased returns.
Again, I would like to thank our team members, ship and shore, the best in all of travel and leisure for delivering unforgettable happiness to another 3 million guests this past quarter by providing them with extraordinary cruise vacations. Of course, we couldn't do it without the support from our travel agent partners and so many other stakeholders.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Dave.
