Come sail away

And keeping with tradition, let's end on a high note by looking at a trend that's related to the unlockdown — Cruises.

The cruise ship industry was big pre covid, as we can see from downloads of the largest two lines. Carnival And Royal Caribbean. But it was one of the first to get hit by the pandemic and has been grounded until very recently.

Since the announcement of cruises resuming, downloads have started climbing.

So far this year, downloads for both Carnival and Royal Caribbean have quadrupled. Both started the year with about 2.5K new downloads per week. That number has been climbing slowly as more things started to reopen, and the companies have started to engage customers with the idea of future trips. Last week, both apps crossed 9K downloads, almost four times higher than January, according to our estimates.

That's great news for Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and the many who have been waiting to board a big ship in the last year. But... there's a lot of sailing to be done before we get back to pre-pandemic downloads. In 2019, Carnival and Royal Caribbean added 50K and 35K downloads per week, respectively, according to our estimates.

What to watch? If the first few cruises manage to come back healthy, downloads will start growing faster and faster, and if the few after continue to come back healthy, we could see even more downloads (and cruisers) than 2019.