Is Carnival the last-budget cruise line in Australia? We crunch the numbers

• P&O Australia used to be know as the nursery of Australian cruising, because it’s where most of us started.
• It was fabulous value, even if the ships were old…and some of the entertainers even older.
• Now Carnival Australia proudly flies the flag as the last budget line in Australia. To test the theory, we crunched the numbers.

The landscape of Australian cruising has greatly shifted vastly over recent years.

A few years ago, Carnival Cruise Line Australia and P&O Cruises Australia were battling it as the best budget line in Australia, with P&O coming out as more affordable.

Then Royal Caribbean was only known to be just a tick above in price, and sometimes offering better deals, with Princess Cruises a tier above Royal Caribbean. 

Today, Royal Caribbean and Princess have moved to premium pricing. But Carnival remains the line that is attracting most new to cruise but proudly continuing to hold the line with a magic $100 a day achieved on some cruises.

When Cruise Passenger’s editor in chief Peter Lynch interviewed Carnival’s Senior Vice President and Country Manager Peter Little, he was heartened that Little proudly proclaimed he was determined to keep fares “accessible” to Australian families.

“We know Australians love value, and that’s not going to change,” Little said. “Cruising is one of the best-value holidays you can take — and our short, fun itineraries are attracting more millennials and young families than ever before.”

But other players have different imperatives. Norwegian Cruise Line, particularly for its Australian cruises, is moving towards higher prices. They do now come with much better inclusion than similar lines, with extremely cheap drinks, specialty dining and WiFi packages.

Celebrity Cruises is a puzzle. Many of its longer cruises of 10-days or more can actually offer great value, competing with Princess and Royal Caribbean. In fact, they often come out cheaper.

Cruise Passenger crunched the numbers on the average cruise prices for each of these lines for the 2026/27 season. This analysis was done with 2026/27 prices as cruise prices generally increase closer to the date as they book out more, meaning using the season ahead would give more distorted numbers.

Some of the results are surprising.

Below you can find the average prices for each line for the 2026/27 season. 

Average cruise price	Carnival	Royal Caribbean	Princess Cruises	Celebrity Cruises	Norwegian Cruise Line
3-day	$440	$760	$836
4-day	$520	$850	$1100	$1106	$1780
5-day	$790		$1200
6-day	$830	$1285	$1850
7-day	$970	$1335	$1880
8-day	$1060	$1700	$2000
9-day	$990	$2400	$2560	$2080
10-day	$1150		$3250	$2600
11-day	$1700	$2975	$4268	$2400	$4800
12-day	$1550		$3300	$2900	$4575

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Carnival emerges as by far the best value line

• As can be seen, Carnival Cruises are far and away offering the cheapest cruise prices for sailings out of Australia.

Royal Caribbean offers cheaper short-cruisers, Celebrity is the better option for 10 days or more

• Royal Caribbean does remain competitive for some shorter cruise lengths, such as over six or seven days, although prices are about 40-55% more expensive over those lengths. However, for longer sailings, due to little supply, Royal Caribbean prices become quite inflated, whereas Carnival prices become quite cheap, especially for nine and 10 day sailings.
• For nine, 10 and 11-day sailings, Celebrity actually emerges as the second best option, offering sailings that are significantly cheaper than Royal Caribbean and Princess, despite offering a comparable, and if anything, arguably more elegant and modern experience. This is likely because Celebrity offers very shorter cruises but plenty of options for cruises of nine-days or more.

What this tells us about Royal Caribbean’s new strategy

• Royal Caribbean and Celebrity are owned by the company, as are Princess and Carnival, this helps us understand both of their strategies. 
• It’s clear that Royal Caribbean will be the cruise line focusing on shorter sailings, and likely soon, longer sailings, but almost entirely to its private destination at Lelepa. Longer sailings on Royal Caribbean to destinations like New Zealand have definitely become a premium product, and could even be phased out entirely as Lelepa comes into the picture. The good news is that Celebrity is offering some of the best prices, and Royal Caribbean Group will be hoping that Celebrity picks up previous Royal Caribbean customers that are looking for longer sailings and different destinations. 

Carnival and Princess price gap is widening

• Meanwhile, it appears clear that the bridge between Carnival and Princess Cruises is widening, with Carnival keeping prices as low as possible, with fairly uniform itineraries, while Princess aims for premium pricing with a larger range of sailings available. Most Princess Cruises will cost at least double that of a Carnival sailing.

NCL isn’t so cheap – but the inclusions are great

• Norwegian Cruise Line is no longer really in the budget space, however, as mentioned above, it does have great inclusions, so if you generally do some specialty dining, pay for wifi and grab a drinks package, you might find that those NCL prices suddenly aren’t so bad. On Aussie cruises these inclusions often come from around $20-40 a day, versus at least $100 per day, but generally even more, on other lines.

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Is Carnival the last budget line in Australia?

The good news is that cruising, whether with Carnival or not, is still one of the best value holidays in Australia, if not the best.

However, a beauty of cruising has often been getting the five-star treatment, at a fraction of the cost. Checking into a fancy cruise ship room, having all their main meals included, a daily room clean and only unpacking once as you go off to see other cities and/or countries is a true privilege for Aussies.

On average, Aussie families budget about $12,758 for a holiday, although, they often tend to overspend this significantly, often paying even double.

Moreover, one in three Aussies are travelling less frequently, 25% are choosing cheaper accomodation when they do travel, and 25% are cutting back on day-to-day leisure activities to ensure they’re still able to travel.

Options like Royal Caribbean, Celebrity and Princess still provide fantastic value, particularly if you can find on a google deal. However, it’s Carnival that offers the truly budget option that can compete with the prices of caravan parks, hotels, family resorts and more, often even beating them on price due to the included food and activities.

A Carnival Cruise doesn’t offer red-carpet luxury, ships can get a bit crowded and some passengers are known to complain about the food, but they’re still offering top-class destinations, multiple dining options and high-class service for prices that are really hard to beat with any type of holiday.

For this reason we continue to see the new-to-cruise market flock to Carnival, with prices luring in new travellers who are seeking better ways to get value for their money.