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After weeks of not seeing much movement on cruise pricing at Carnival Cruise Lines ($CCL), we're beginning to see a dip this week. Last week we saw the first indications that Carnival was experimenting with stateroom pricing in order to move inventory, but as we ran the data again this morning, we're seeing average price drops across the board per stateroom type — some more than others.

This comes after we saw inventory — as described here by the number of rooms available on Carnival's booking site — stagnate and even grow, presumably as would-be cruises remain in a wait-and-see holding pattern as coronavirus makes its way through the travel industry.

But what we hadn't seen was any significant movement on stateroom prices. That is, until today.

Across all stateroom types, the average price dropped from 714.80 to 705.60 between March 10 and March 11, 2020 — a 1.29% drop. While that may not sound like a large jump, it's the largest single-night movement we've seen in a month and it accounts for an average, meaning some individual cruises are discounting more than that.

The least affected, so far, are suite stateroom prices, which have even trended up in recent weeks. They have seen a slight dip in recent days, however. Given the premium pricing and image of suites, suites appear to be the last in line when it comes to discounting.

Balcony staterooms dropped from a $788.50 average to $775.70 between March 10 and 11, a 1.6% drop.

Oceanview staterooms dropped from an average of $555.80 to $544.00 between March 10 and 11, a 2.12% drop in price.

Carnival's interior staterooms, the least expensive of the bunch, dropped from an average of $456.10 to $444.10 the same night. That's a 2.6% drop, the largest of the bunch.

Price cuts aren't the only way Carnival Cruise Lines is getting aggressive with Coronavirus. It's begun offering free onboard credit to cruisers that they can use on drinks and other activities. It also added more strict passenger screening guidelines, ship cleaning protocols, and destination-specific requirements. By sheer number of passengers per year, Carnival is the largest at 5,716,500, far outpacing Princess at 1,667,500 (to be clear, Carnival owns Princess Cruise Lines).

About the Data:

Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.

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