Carnival gets strong revenue from Australia after closing P&O, hopefully securing year round sailings

• Carnival Corporation has been posting record profits, recently releasing its Q3 2025 results.
• Carnival’s decision to cut P&O Cruises Australia appears to already be proving financially beneficial.
• Despite cutting a ship from the fleet, revenue is on the rise.

For Carnival Corporation, everything is looking up. The corporation which owns Carnival Cruises, Carnival Australia, Princess Cruises, Holland America Line, Seabourn, Cunard, P&O Cruises and more, is already 50% booked for 2026 and posting record profits.

They’re also reporting higher rates of advanced bookings, with 2027 bookings already looking good.  It is believed that bookings for Australia are also running at very high levels.

The story is exactly the same in Australia, where Carnival’s decision to absorb P&O Cruises Australia into Carnival Cruises Australia, although controversial, appears to already be reaping financial rewards.

CEO Josh Weinstein mentioned that tinkering with their brands appears to have kept profits moving in the right direction.

“We have right-sized many of our brands that needed right-sizing, and the progress is good. We’ll continue to support the brands that need a little bit more help than others to keep pushing up the ranks.”

While Australia is one ship down across Carnival and P&O, with Pacific Explorer leaving the fleet, less capacity and the P&O ships being under the Carnival brand have meant the line can push up cruise fares and lower operating costs, achieving profit growth even though they’re operating with one ship less. 

Carnival President Christine Duffy told Cruise Passenger in an exclusive interview earlier this year that closing P&O was vital to secure the ships for Australia.

The proof is in the difference between Carnival’s Q3 results from 2024, compared to their Q3 results from 2025. Revenue has gone from USD$288 million to USD$313 million, which marks a 9% rate of growth over the 12-month period or $25 million.

This comes at a time when USA cruising revenue for Carnival grew by less than 1% over the same period, and European growth fell slightly below that of Australia, at about 8.5%. 

However, to understand the key reason this number is so important we need to clarify that these numbers signal revenue, not profit. Revenue is the total income for a business, before subtracting expenses, which then equates to profit. 

The key factor behind Carnival’s decision to fold P&O into Carnival wasn’t necessarily to increase revenue, but more so to decrease operating expenses. Not only did it remove an entire cruise ship from the equation, but it also allowed Carnival to put all the marketing, employees, itineraries and more under the same umbrella of Carnival, greatly removing operational costs. 

Therefore, the fact that Carnival is seeing increasing revenue is significant because it has also greatly reduced its operational costs in Australia, meaning profits are likely soaring. The greater risk to the move was to revenue, as Carnival took a ship out of Australia and had to hope it could fill four Carnival ships consistently. Though the numbers show this hasn’t heard local revenue whatsoever, as mentioned, it’s actually soared 9%. 

The numbers for Carnival’s exact profits in Australia aren’t available, but they are surely on the up and Carnival executives must be feeling very vindicated in their decision. 

What does this mean for consumers?

Higher cruise fares aren’t exactly welcome news for cruise passengers, but these figures do have plenty of upside for Aussie cruisers as well. 

The most important thing is that Carnival finding a way to make cruising more profitable in Australia means we can be more confident that they’ll be keeping their ships here for the foreseeable future.

If the pattern continues, we can perhaps expect more investment into the Australian market, such as more or new ships, refurbishments and upgrades and one day, maybe even a private destination like Royal Caribbean is building at Lelepa.

More profits may also give Carnival a bit more room to experiment with different types of itineraries and more cruises leaving from different destinations, as we’re already seeing with Carnival Adventure sailings out of Melbourne being announced for 2028.