In a year of milestones – including its 50th birthday – Carnival Cruise Line has reached another important mark, welcoming three million guests since the restart of guest operations in July 2021, amidst a busy summer season across its fleet of 23 ships.

After recording its biggest booking week in the cruise line’s 50-year history this spring, the last quarterly Carnival Corporation business update projected that CCL's ships will reach nearly 110% occupancy this summer.

The line says that expectation is being realized in the increase of guests across the fleet. Carnival saw its total guest count hit the two million mark in May and it has now risen to three million in less than 75 days – an average of 95,000 guests per week.

Carnival’s five busiest homeports, PortMiami, Fla., Port Canaveral, Fla., Galveston, Tex., Long Beach, Calif., and New Orleans, La., were among the first to resume guest operations and account for 77% of all Carnival embarkations and a guest total of 2,324,823.

“Carnival set the pace for the industry as the first major cruise line to return to full guest operations in the U.S., and we continue to lead as we now have welcomed three million guests who have enjoyed much-needed vacations,” said Carnival president Christine Duffy.

“The economic benefit to our homeports and destinations is also significant and we are looking forward to restarting cruise operations in Australia this October.”

In addition to sailing from all 14 of Carnival’s year-round and seasonal U.S. homeports, the cruise line’s three-ship deployment to the Pacific Northwest set in motion its largest Alaskan season ever, with approximately 100,000 guests expected to embark from both Seattle and San Francisco.

The Port of San Francisco is also Carnival’s newest seasonal homeport, strengthening its position as the cruise line embarking more guests than any other operator from California.

In all, Carnival ships have made more than 3,000 port-of-call visits at 92 individual ports in 36 countries. Carnival ships have called on Mexico the most with about 800 visits – half of which have been to Cozumel, making it the cruise line’s most popular port.

After Cozumel (385 calls), the other destinations included in the top five are: Nassau (320 calls) and Half Moon Cay (155 calls) in The Bahamas, Amber Cove, Dominican Republic (159 calls), and Mahogany Bay, Roatan (123 calls).

In another significant development, Carnival recently broke ground on a new $200 million cruise port in Freeport, Grand Bahama, which officials anticipate will breathe new tourism life into the economy of the second-largest city in The Bahamas.

Carnival’s growth is set to continue, with five ships joining the fleet over the next two years.

This November, Costa Luminosa will become Carnival Luminosa and begin sailing seasonally from Brisbane, Australia. Carnival Celebration, an Excel-class ship powered by LNG, will join its sister Mardi Gras as part of the Carnival fleet and begin service from PortMiami in November.

A third Excel-class ship, Carnival Jubilee, is set to debut next year from Galveston. Carnival also continues to plan the launch of its new concept, “Choose Fun with Carnival, Italian Style,” which will bring two additional ships from Costa into the Carnival fleet in 2023 and 2024 respectively.