Sven Lindblad, founder and CEO of Lindblad Expeditions, once again warned competitors against “unsustainable” pricing strategies in the expedition cruise segment.
During the company’s second-quarter conference call on Thursday, he emphasized Lindblad’s commitment to pricing integrity while criticizing other operators’ discount policies.
“We have remained true to price integrity, which is fundamental to our business,” he said.
“Many of our competitors continue to compete on price to increase their occupancy numbers. This is undoubtedly a flawed and unsustainable strategy,” noted Lindblad.
To reliably reach the historical occupancy rate again, Lindblad is pursuing a different approach, he explained.
“We are rebuilding our existing guest base. This customer group is the backbone of some of our itineraries, the longer and more unusual ones,” Lindblad continued.
“We believe that this strategy, barring external influences, will enable us to achieve this goal for the full year 2026.”
This is not the first time the company has criticized other expedition operators for their discount and pricing practices.
During Lindblad’s first-quarter earnings conference call in April, Lindblad said he was seeing “increasingly dramatic price movements” in this segment.
He called it a bad habit and said the long-term business consequences of these measures would be “very negative.”
“Obviously the inventory-demand ratio is out of whack at some of our competitors, and there is also some desperation due to Covid,” he noted at the time.
Lindblad’s recent earnings call showed a slight increase in passenger load factor, reaching 78 percent in the second quarter of 2024.
This figure represents an increase of two percent compared to the first quarter of the year and four percent compared to the same period in 2023.
