Europe is a “travel playground” for Royal Caribbean, the group’s chief executive has hailed, as he confirmed the region has seen “absolutely exceptional” demand

Speaking on the launch of Royal Caribbean’s newest Icon class ship, Legend of the Seas, Jason Liberty emphasised the importance of Europe to the brand, which is why the latest ship is sailing in the region, he added.

Legend of the Seas will operate seven-night Western Mediterranean itineraries in summer 2026 and 2027 to capitalise on the “thirst” the line is seeing for sailings in Europe, Liberty said.

“Europe is an incredibly important market to us,” he said. “Europe is a travel playground and people thirst to come here and immerse themselves in the incredible culture in the countries here.

“Now we have more than two Icon class ships, we can bring one here which generates a huge amount of interest and demand and allows us to live our mission: match every guest with that vacation experience they are looking for.”

Before conflict broke out in the Middle East at the end of February, demand for Europe was “absolutely exceptional”, Liberty said, as he confirmed that demand has bounced back after a small dip.

He likened the impact of the war to “stubbing your toe”, explaining that the line had a minor setback in terms of bookings, but “a few minutes after stubbing your toe, you’re okay”.

“Demand for Europe was absolutely exceptional in that booking period [before the war],” he said. “It’s still fantastic now, it had moderated a little bit relative to where we were which is understandable as it was costing more to get to Europe, but now we’re pretty much sold for the summer.

“Demand for cruise is exceptionally high.”

He went on to highlight the number of cruise ships currently on the line’s order books, including four more Icon class vessels, an Oasis class vessel and two Discovery class vessels – the newest class to enter service, all by 2032.

Asked how the line plans to fill all the extra capacity, Liberty said there will be no issue as the cruise sector cannot keep pace with the wider travel industry as there is a limited number of shipyards capable of building new cruise ships, while land-based alternatives can continue to grow without constraint.

“On a demand standpoint, cruising is about $100 billion a year in revenue while the wider travel and leisure sector is about $2.4 trillion in revenue,” he said.

“We are a small sliver of the travel space and no matter what we do as a [cruise] industry, we will not be able to keep pace with the growth of travel and leisure and we’ll continue to lose share because we’re supply constrained and others aren’t.”

He hailed agents are an “incredibly important” piece of the puzzle for selling the additional capacity the line will see come online in the next six years.

“Travel partners are an incredibly important part of the story commercially and they are also incredible at providing feedback on how we can do things better so we can deliver an incredible experience and they get more high-quality bookings from their clients,” he said. “We want to make sure we’re as easy as possible to do business with for our travel partners.”