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Booking vs. Royal Caribbean – Two Travel Giants, Two Different Journeys

By MPI29th October 2025StocksBooking, investing, Royal Caribbean, stocks

Booking vs. Royal Caribbean: Two Travel Giants, Two Different Journeys

Published October 29, 2025 · My Passive Income

Two of the biggest names in global travel just reported results. While Booking Holdings (Nasdaq:BKNG) continues to climb on the strength of digital travel demand, Royal Caribbean (Nasdaq:RCL) finds itself navigating choppier waters, pressured by higher costs and softer pricing. Here’s how both players are positioned going into the final stretch of 2025 — and into 2026.

Booking Holdings: Flying Smoothly Above Expectations

Booking Holdings once again delivered a strong quarter, reinforcing the idea that travel demand remains resilient. The company beat expectations across key metrics and showed that global consumers are still prioritizing travel spending, even in an uncertain macro environment.

Headline results (Q3 2025):

Adjusted EPS: $99.50 (above FactSet estimate of $95.85)
Net profit: $2.75 billion, +9% vs. Q3 2024
Revenue: $9.01 billion, +13% YoY (estimate: $8.73 billion)
Gross bookings: $49.7 billion, +14% YoY (estimate: $48 billion)
Nights booked: 323 million, +8% YoY (vs. ~6% expected)

Q4 2025 outlook:

+4–6% growth in nights booked
+11–13% growth in total gross bookings
+10–12% revenue growth (slightly below analyst forecasts)

“Despite ongoing macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty, we’re pleased to see positive momentum, with steady travel demand so far in the fourth quarter,” the company said.

Stock snapshot:

+4.8% after-hours reaction
+2.6% YTD (still trailing the S&P 500)
Market cap: $165.96B
Forward P/E: 23.5× (vs. sector median ~17.7×)

What the analysts see: Booking continues to post impressive top-line expansion, with ~17.6% annualized revenue growth over the last three years. That said, the forward view is more measured: consensus expects revenue growth of just ~8.3% in the next 12 months. Translation: investors are paying a premium multiple for a company that is still growing — but not at “hypergrowth” levels anymore.

Royal Caribbean: Sailing Through Choppy Waters

For Royal Caribbean, the story is more complicated. Demand is strong, bookings are healthy, and 2026 looks promising. But short-term pressure from costs and pricing is starting to worry investors.

Headline results (Q3 2025):

Adjusted EPS: $5.75 (slightly above estimates)
Revenue: $5.14B (below $5.17B expected)
Ticket revenue: $3.64B (+3.4% vs. 2024)
Onboard & other revenue: $1.5B (+6% YoY; in line with expectations)
Advance onboard bookings: ~50%, with ~90% of those bookings done digitally

Cost pressures:

Net cruise cost per available day (ex-fuel): +4.8%
Higher fuel and maintenance costs
Normalizing ticket prices after a post-pandemic boom
Investor concerns about cash flow and future capex plans

Forward guidance:

Q4 2025 EPS forecast: $2.74–$2.79
Full-year 2025 guidance: $15.58–$15.63 per share
2026 outlook: “We expect EPS starting with a 17,” said the CEO

Royal Caribbean is also leaning heavily on product pipeline and differentiated experiences:

Record expected occupancy in 2026
New flagship demand from Star of the Seas and Celebrity Xcel
Strong interest in Royal Beach Club Paradise Island
Celebrity River itineraries nearly sold out immediately after launch

Stock snapshot:

-12% in pre-market trading after the report
Selloff driven mainly by margin fears, not demand fears

The message from the market is clear: demand alone isn’t enough anymore. Investors now want proof that cruise operators can protect margins, manage fuel and maintenance costs, and generate cash while still investing in new ships and destinations.

Two Travel Stories, One Sector in Motion

Looking at Booking and Royal Caribbean side by side gives us a snapshot of the wider travel industry in late 2025:

Booking Holdings: an asset-light, digital marketplace that scales globally with relatively low incremental cost per booking.
Royal Caribbean: a capital-intensive operator with physical assets, higher fixed costs, and direct exposure to fuel, labor, and maintenance inflation.

Both benefit from the same macro driver: consumers still prioritize experiences, travel, and leisure time. But the way that demand turns into profit is very different.

Booking is being rewarded for efficient growth, strong margins, and visibility into future bookings.
Royal Caribbean is being punished not for lack of demand — demand looks excellent — but for rising costs and worries about how sustainable current pricing really is.

Quick Takeaway

Booking Holdings: still in control, still highly profitable, still scaling. The market is paying a premium multiple for that clarity.
Royal Caribbean: healthy booking pipeline and record occupancy in sight, but investors are asking: at what cost to margins and cash flow?

Get rich in the stock market overnight. Myth or reality?

By MPI26th October 2022Smart moneyinvesting, money, myth, rich, smart, stocks

To be a successful investor it is essential to understand and overcome the biases that often lead to wrong investment decisions. A common misconception, especially among many new investors, is the belief that investing in the stock market can make them rich overnight.

The scenario seems real in that some investors end up making big gains at one point, but in this case, more often than not, the investment was made years ago.

Success is due to patience, emotional intelligence or vast experience rather than luck or a great trading opportunity that “struck” overnight. Financial literacy and staying up-to-date with the most important news and events are ingredients that also make the difference between investment success and failure.

The stock markets are constantly changing and it is not good to expect big and quick gains. This fact does not help you concretely, but, on the contrary, adds even more pressure on you.

That is why, before you actually enter the market, review the relevant information and be aware of the associated benefits and risks.

Perhaps along the way you will be pressed for time and this will make you want to “cut corners”, simplify complex decisions and thus become overconfident in your decision-making process. But keeping your expectations realistic not only gives you a balanced point of view, it also helps you be rational.

Moreover, because the decisions you make trigger certain processes, biases can actually prevent you from having an optimal approach (optimal does not mean perfect!).

At times when you seek to be perfect in this area, you begin to give too much importance to some things, leaving others on the outside.

With limited resources as an individual, it is better to seek an optimal and not a perfect allocation of them, because the inevitable errors will drain your energy and make you lose your focus.

You have to remember that in investing, you don’t aim for the impossible, you just have to eliminate the errors to become constantly better.

That is why, if you avoid major mistakes and have some understanding of the markets and the economy, the odds of becoming a successful investor are completely in your favor. But don’t think that this is the secret to becoming rich overnight.

Those who are extremely confident and also have the misfortune of having…luck in the beginning, believe themselves far above the level of those who have some experience and have also recorded losses among their gains.

But these lucky beginners will be the most shocked by the markets, and the return to the ground will be more painful for them.

By constantly learning about “investment psychology” you will know how to manage other emotional errors that can occur in any investor.

The most common prejudices and preconceptions that can lead to wrong investment decisions:

Confirmation – some investors are overconfident in their decisions, focusing on data that seems to confirm, rather than disprove, this.
Attraction to “sensational” information – as investors are bombarded with a plethora of information every day from financial commentators, newspapers and stockbrokers, it is difficult for them to filter it to focus on the relevant information.
Aversion to potential losses – some investors refuse to sell losing investments in the hope that they will get their money back. But, in addition to money, they can also lose their self-confidence.
Incentives – the power that earnings and incentives can have on human behavior often leads to exaggerated frenzy.
The tendency to oversimplify – in seeking to understand complex matters, investors tend to want simpler explanations, but some matters are inherently difficult to explain and do not lend themselves to simple approaches.
Hindsight – this state of mind prompts investors to eliminate objectivity in evaluating past investment decisions and inhibits their ability to learn from mistakes.
Confidence Transfer – Speculative bubbles are usually the result of groupthink and “herd” mentality. This concept describes a certain kind of inner comfort that an investor can feel when they think that “others are doing the same”, even if their decision is not necessarily a good one.
Neglecting probabilities – investors tend to ignore, overestimate, or underestimate the likelihood of outcomes other than those they have calculated. Most are inclined to oversimplify the process and allocate a single point estimate when making certain decisions.
Anchoring in the past – represents the tendency of investors to rely too much on a reference or information heard in the past when making a decision.

To remember :

Understanding these biases can lead to better decision-making, which is fundamental to reducing risk and improving investment returns over time.
Shortcuts especially do not work in the financial capital markets. Make sure you follow a disciplined, rational and balanced approach to investing, always keeping in mind the long-term perspective, company fundamentals and market analysis of the sector concerned.
Investors who want to take shortcuts often end up losing their invested capital and blaming the markets for their own preconceived decision.
The reason our mind tends to simplify or make decisions based on trusting certain situational patterns without applying its own filters is because it wants to reduce energy. Thus, if you are just starting out and want to become a profitable investor, you need to make sure you have the mental energy and patience to avoid these prejudice traps.
Financial literacy is what makes the difference between investment success and failure. Invest in yourself first, in your education, to make sure your money starts working for you and not the other way around!

What to do: pay off the credit or invest for passive income?

By MPI22nd February 2020Smart moneycredit, invest, mortgage, repayment, saving, savings, smart money, stocks

Pay off the credit or invest for passive income?

I saved a certain amount of money and I manage to keep saving month by month, what do I do? Do I pay off my credit or invest to generate higher income in the future?

Probably many of you have at least one mortgage loan and/or one or more consumer loans (if you read this article) and at the same time you have started to accumulate some financial reserves and may have thought or even started to put the money to work. In this context, you may also think about the fact that interest rates may rise, a crisis may occur at any time and at the same time you can see the good profits that have been made and are made from real estate investments, stock exchange, cryptocurrencies and business.

In all this context, it is normal for the answer to the question to pay the credit or invest the money to be complex, with many variables and uncertainties, but also so important. Basically the answer can guide your financial strategy for several years.

Let’s begin!

Before I should ask myself if I pay the credit or invest, there are some things we have to check:

If there are debts from credit cards and overdrafts with interest rates above 15% -20%, those should be paid before we think about investments;
Consumer debt, car etc. – we should focus on them and pay them in advance before investing;
We fail to save constantly – focus first on building this habit;
Reserve fund to cover living costs for a period of 6-12 months.

Before you have all the above checked, you should not even think about starting investing.

Any consumer credit used for the acquisition of liabilities should be paid as a priority. Real estate and investment loans (those used to purchase assets) are the ones we can doubt whether we will pay them in advance or not.

We will talk specifically about real estate loans, to simplify and make the analysis relevant, but we can have the same analysis process in the case of a non-real estate investment loan.Well, now the question that remains is: Do I pay the real estate loan or do I use my future reserves and savings for investments?

Economically speaking

From an economic point of view, we will compare the actual effective interest rate of the loan with the expected net return on investments.

For example, we have an interest of 5% on the mortgage loan and

a return estimated by us of 10% of the investment in shares (historical average yield)

we find an apartment at a very good price and with a rent yield of 8%

bonds with 9% interest

and so on….

So we have on one hand a 5% safe interest vs. a yield estimate of 10% or 8% or 9%.The decision may seem obvious – at such a yield differential, in 20-25 years you pay the property 2 times.

But the decision is simple just at first sight and it becomes more complex when we go deep. Why? Because the interest rate on credit is safe (if it is 5%, it is 5% no matter what I do) while the return on investments is always an estimate.

Estimate because:

The stock market may no longer perform in the next 10 years as in the past or you catch a very weak interval;
The yield on the rental property may decrease, or it may not be at all, unless you have a tenant or you find a structural problem of the construction;
The issuer of the bond can go bankrupt and you lose all the money.

There are risks that you must take into account to adjust the returns on investments with the percentage of risk. Professionals always calculate their adjusted return on an investment. The calculation is very complex and has many variables. But for the sake of simplification we can estimate a differential for the degree of risk. For example: -1.5% for a very good real estate, -2.5% for small and medium-sized companies bonds and -3% for blue chips shares.Thus, we now have a comparison between + 5% credit payment and (10% – 3% = 7%) for shares; (8% -1.5% = 6.5%) for real estate and (9% -2.5% = 6.5%) for bonds.

Now it’s a little clearer. We know that up to a loan interest rate of 6.5% or 7% we can invest without problems, but if the interest exceeds these levels it becomes more profitable to pay the credit.

Of course, the calculation is relevant depending on how well we made our estimate of future profits.

Many investors and business owners maintain their long-term loans, knowing that they can generate higher long-term returns with the same amount of money. This is the case of many smaller or larger entrepreneurs, it is the case of those who invest professionally or even those who invest passively in the long term.

Obviously, a solution would be to make more risky and / or more active investments that can bring higher returns, but in this case you really should know what you are doing.

Important is to make your calculations as well as you can, because, after all, nobody knows the future.

Psychologically

The need for survival/safety is lower (and stronger) on Maslow’s pyramid than aspirational needs. From here comes a degree of stress that will make you quite conservative in investments when you have unpaid loans.

Emotions are not good in investments.

To make a decision:

Do your calculations – see economic analysis above;
Calculate your risk profile;
What decision would make you unable to sleep at night?;
How would you feel about paying off your debts? But what if you didn’t pay them?
How would you feel if you invested in passive income? But what if you didn’t invest?
How would you feel if you paid your credit with 5% interest and the stock would have a 50% yield that year, which you would not benefit from? But if you did not pay your credit and invest in the stock market, and the stock market would fall by 50% that year? Which of these 2 options would most disturb you?

When choosing whether to pay your credit or invest/accumulate reserves you must take into account both the economical and psychological aspects. Both are important, but more important are the psychological ones, because they have the power to sabotage you.

Finally, if you are still not cleared how to proceed, you can choose the middle way and use the amounts saved according to the formula: Invest = (10 – Credit interest rate) and with the rest pay the credit. That is, if the credit interest is 4% and you save 1000 EUR per month, you pay in advance (or you set aside to pay in advance) 400 EUR and you invest 600 EUR.

Simple, right?