On Tuesday night CNBC aired a one-hour piece ambitiously titled "Cruise Inc.: Big Money on the High Seas." As a piece of financial journalism, it was a bit weak -- while they did mention that it's a fixed cost business, talk about increasing capacity, and toss in a few juicy stats (see below), they didn't discuss the industry's margins, bond ratings, dividend history, etc. They also didn't distinguish between Carnival and Royal Caribbean the brands and Carnival and Royal Caribbean the holding companies -- instead, they gave the impression that there were just three brands in the cruise world.

Rather, it was mostly a video journal about Peter Greenberg's week-long Caribbean jaunt on NCL's lovely Norwegian Pearl. (Which we had occasion to visit last year: photos of Norwegian Pearl.)

I shouldn't be too hard on Greenberg or CNBC -- it was good fun to watch! Also good PR for the brand, so kudos to the NCL team.

Plus, I do appreciate having a public source I can point to for industry certain stats. Here are the highlights...

• 92% occupancy on this sailing -- ouch! (They never stated the date of the sailing, presumably sometime in January, February or March of this year.)
• $3.50 head tax in Roatan, Honduras. In contrast with up to $50 up in Alaska
• Roatan got 350k cruise passengers in 2008, expects 500k in 2009
• Pearl's shore excursion manager estimates that 75% of guests book at least one shore excursion on this Exotic Western Caribbean itinerary. (Based on my recollection of a similar cruise, these three ports, Roatan, Belize and Great Stirrup Cay, are definitely very, um, shore ex friendly!)
• 30% of shore excursions are booked online, prior to the cruise. This was a CNBC voice-over, and not explicitly connected to this sailing, NCL, or anything specific. Argh.
• 40-50% of shore excursion revenue goes to the tour operator, 50-60% to the cruise line. CNBC self-cited, but does not seem out of line.
• Bar revenue plan = $7.25 per passenger, per day. Interesting - even though they didn't explicitly say if this is based on lower berth passengers or all passengers, available or actual. (Hmm ... that's what? One glass of wine? Seems light to me. Does that mean I'm a total lush??)
• Norwegian Spirit's $16M refit in 2008 was conducted in Mobile, Alabama. Among other things, they added 11 cabins.
• There are over 1100 security cameras on Pearl, and a full time surveillance team.
• NCL America venture lost $100M until they pulled two of the three ships out, according to NCL CEO Kevin Sheehan.

Anyway, while this production was no Drydock: A Cruise Ship Reborn (Mike Rowe's coverage of the Sovereign of the Seas refit, my all time favorite documentary), it was nice to see a somewhat serious treatment of the industry in the popular media.