Carnival Cruises 2004 Annual Report Download - page 6

3Carnival Corporation & plc
13 vessels, will drive growth in all geographic regions and position our
continued expansion over the next several years.
North America today represents two-thirds of our business, and to
build on our leadership position we have five ships on order for our
well-recognized brands Carnival Cruise Lines, Princess Cruises and
Holland America Line. To further stimulate demand for these com-
panies, each of these brands embarked on new marketing campaigns
to reflect their distinct market positioning, including Carnival Cruise
Lines’ “A Million Ways to Have Fun,” Princess Cruises’ “Escape Completely”
and Holland America’s “Signature of Excellence.”
We have long believed that Europe offers tremendous growth poten-
tial for our company, and we are well positioned to capitalize on that
opportunity with eight of our new ship orders dedicated to our European
brands. Costa Cruises, our continental European brand with a strong
presence in Italy, France, Germany and Spain will introduce the newly
designed Costa Concordia class ships in 2006 and 2007, which will be
the largest ships based in the Mediterranean year-round.
The UK remains the most established cruise region in Europe, and
our presence will be expanded in 2005 with the delivery of the new
Arcadia for P&O Cruises. In 2008, the Queen Victoria, which will
incorporate many of the features of the grand ocean liner style of
Queen Mary 2, will be launched for Cunard Line.
Our European strategy is also focused on growing the German
market, which is increasingly discovering the value and convenience
of cruise holidays. During the year, we ordered two ships for our AIDA
brand’s club resort style cruise specifically designed for the younger,
more active vacationers in the German market.
We are also looking for opportunities to grow our presence inter-
nationally and current efforts include developing a strategy for the
Asian cruise market.
Our strong cash flow also provides us with the opportunity to return
additional value to shareholders. This includes the recently announced
20 percent increase in our quarterly dividend to $0.15 per share and
the board of directors’ authorization to repurchase up to $1 billion of
Carnival Corporation and Carnival plc shares.
We have a clear vision for our future: maintaining a constant focus
on providing higher quality vacations at tremendous value to our
customers, while keeping an eye on the bottom line and earning
superior returns for our shareholders.
At the same time, our corporate culture fosters a deep commitment
to preserving the marine environment and in particular the pristine
condition of the waters upon which our vessels sail. We are commit-
ted to pollution prevention and continuous improvement of our
environmental management. We recently announced our goal to
become certified in accordance with the internationally recognized
standard ISO 14001, which provides a framework for environmental
management and the measurement of environmental improvement.
The past year we saw the realization of many achievements and
accomplishments, but none of this success would have been possible
without the hard work and dedication of our 70,000 employees
worldwide whose collective efforts have led to this record year.
I also want to thank our board of directors and shareholders for
their continuing support of our efforts.
Sincerely,
Micky Arison
Chairman and CEO
February 23, 2005