Carnival Corporation projects its Celebration Key destination on Grand Bahama will handle approximately 3.5 million guests in 2027, up from 2.7 million next year, as Princess Cruises, AIDA and Costa join Carnival Cruise Line in calling at the private port.

Princess begins calls next month, with select AIDA and Costa sailings following late next year, CEO Josh Weinstein told analysts on the company's third quarter earnings call. That brings the number of Carnival Corporation brands calling to four, with 31 ships visiting in 2027 — up from 26 this year.

The destination recently marked its first anniversary, having welcomed almost 2.5 million guests in its opening year. A second pier is now open. "The guest response has been exceptional," Weinstein said.

For travel sellers, the expansion matters because it multiplies the itineraries that touch Carnival Corporation's owned infrastructure — product the company controls end to end, from pier to beach clubs, and monetizes directly rather than through third-party port calls.

The broader destination portfolio is scaling in parallel. Carnival's expanded destinations at RelaxAway, Half Moon Cay and Isla Tropicale in Roatan have each welcomed roughly 250,000 guests to date. Combined, those three are projected to grow from 1.9 million guests in 2026 to 2.8 million in 2027, with seven brands calling.

That places Carnival Corporation's owned-destination network — Celebration Key plus the three others — on a trajectory toward more than 6 million combined annual guests by 2027, based on the company's own projections. These are forecasts, not measured results, and hinge on ship deployment holding as planned.

Itinerary bundling is the distribution play. Next year, 35 percent of Carnival Cruise Line's Caribbean capacity will feature itineraries calling at both Celebration Key and RelaxAway on the same cruise, pairing two different beach experiences. Both destinations now have their full marine infrastructure built out, allowing the company to maximize throughput, Weinstein said.

For agents, that bundling creates a sharper sell: cruises marketed on exclusive access to two private destinations rather than one, concentrated on more than a third of the line's Caribbean capacity.

Capacity is the constraint on land, not at sea. Weinstein said Celebration Key has reached capacity on the land side in its current build, though the site has room to expand. "I do hope and expect that we'll be able to talk about what's phase two for Celebration Key to be able to provide even more to even more guests over time," he said, while calling it premature to discuss details.

A phase-two announcement would be the next signal of how much volume Carnival intends to push through Grand Bahama. Until then, the 3.5 million guest figure for 2027 marks the ceiling of what the current build can deliver.