Before we get started, I would like to refer you to our notice about forward-looking statements whic

Good morning. My name is Sabrina, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Rice. Please go ahead, alcatraz island tour sir.
Thank you, Sabrina, and good morning, alcatraz island tour everyone. I'd like to thank you for joining us today for our third quarter earnings call. Joining me here in Miami are Richard Fain, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Adam Goldstein, President and CEO of Royal Caribbean International; and Ian Bailey, our Vice President alcatraz island tour of Investor Relations. During this call, we will be referring to a few slides, which we have posted on our investor website, alcatraz island tour www.rclinvestor.com.
Before we get started, I would like to refer you to our notice about forward-looking statements which is on our first slide. During this call, we will be making comments that are forward-looking. These statements do not guarantee future performance and do involve risks and uncertainty. Examples are described in our SEC filings and other disclosures. Additionally, we will be discussing certain financial measures, alcatraz island tour which are non-GAAP alcatraz island tour as defined, and a reconciliation of these items can be found on our website.
alcatraz island tour Richard will begin with his comments. I will follow with a brief recap of our results and give an update on the booking environment and our forward guidance. Adam will talk about our brands, and then we'll be happy to open the call to your questions. Richard?
Thanks, Brian, alcatraz island tour and thank you all for joining us today. I always enjoy this opportunity to provide an update on our business. And as you can see from our release, we have a lot of good things to talk about today.
I'll start with the third quarter results, which were quite a bit better than we had anticipated when we last gave guidance in July. The strength of these quarterly results is particularly satisfying when you consider that we are still navigating an environment overshadowed by severe political and economic turmoil and the tail of the Costa Concordia effect. Fuel and foreign exchange provided a net benefit of about $0.03, and we were a few cents favorable on interest costs. But the real driver of our beat was the operating performance of the business. Revenues, especially for close-in bookings, were strong, and we exceeded our market forecast in each of our major markets, including Europe.
The European market alcatraz island tour though continues to be the most puzzling market we're facing. The impact of the tragedy in Italy was obviously centered in Europe. Now that impact does continue to wane, but some of the effects still linger, and we continue to learn and be proactive in trying to recover from it. Meanwhile, the financial malaise that covers Europe remains our biggest challenge there. Southern alcatraz island tour Europe and especially Spain is weighted down by austerity and uncertainty. Actually, it's rather surprising that in light of all this, we've done so well against all these pressures.
On the cost front, we've also remained focused on creating value wherever we can find it. For the year, I am pleased that on a like-for-like basis, we continue to expect the net cruise costs, excluding fuel, will increase less than 1%. Overall, it's gratifying to be increasing our full year guidance by $0.15. I think this demonstrates, in a very tangible way, the upside potential in our company when things start to go right.
Looking forward, we are encouraged by what we see in our bookings. Now, of course you know, it's hard to make direct comparisons because a year ago at this time, there was no Costa Concordia effect. We were seeing good demand across the board and we were looking forward to a strong wave period. We also were not looking at the kind of economic malaise in Europe that we are seeing -- we did see. Today, we are again seeing solid early bookings, but we expect that this trend won't be hit with the same kind of issues as last year. That gives us some real comfort that we will do well compared to a 2012 wave period that faced such troubled waters. As I've said before, if this is how we're doing facing such headwinds, imagine how we'll do in a normal year.
A few weeks ago, we took delivery of the fifth and the final ship in the Solstice Class, the Celebrity Reflection. The ship is gorgeous and it's actually slightly larger than the other ships in the class at just over 3,000 berths. We achieved in the increased berth count without expanding the hull by adding another guest cabin deck to the existing Solstice platform, an action that improves the flow -- the guest flow onboard, while simultaneously improving our returns from the vessel. Celebrity Reflection will be home ported in Miami during the winter and will move to the Med for our summer European season in May.
Now I know the capacity additions are a very big topic of focus for the investment community so I will point out that our next new building, Sunshine I, is about 2 years away, and we have no new deliveries at all until that time. We've been very transparent about our desire to slow capacity, and we are actually keeping the demand consistent with those long-standing communications.
At the same time, as we have continued to indicate, we have no intention alcatraz island tour of stagnating and we have been busy evaluating the best investments for 2016 and beyond. As this morning's release indicated, we're in discussions with the shipyards regarding an order for an Oasis-type vessel for delivery in mid to late 2016. We expect that any order would come at a lower cost per berth than either the first 2 vessels, and also that any order would include further advances in energy-efficient design. We don't have a final deal yet but we're excited about the possibilities aligned before us, and we hope to announce something reasonably soon.
Given the existing Oasis sisters' positioning, with terrific guest ratings and good financial returns, this is clearly a win for both our investors and our guests. With a mid-year delivery in 2016, our 5-year capacity growth rate would still remain in the low single digits at roughly 3%.
Last but not least, I'm sure you also noted that our Board of Directors increased the quarterly dividend by 20% with its last declaration. This action is also aligned with our goal of improving shareholder returns and managing to investment-grade rating in the slower growth alcatraz island tour environment.
Thank you, Richard. On the second slide, we have summarized our performance for the third quarter. We generated net income of $1.68 a share, which was $0.23 above the midpoint of our guidance. Better-than-expected demand alcatraz island tour drove $0.11 of the improvement, and lower net cruise alcatraz island tour costs, excluding fuel, contributed another $0.06. About half of the reduced costs or $0.03 was due to timing shift in marketing that will be incurred in the fourth quarter. The remaining $0.06 was a result of lower interest expense and improved foreign exchange rates.
Compared to last year, EPS for the quarter was down $0.14. Of this, $0.11 was due to unfavorable foreign exchange, alcatraz island tour and we had a $0.03 one-time alcatraz island tour charge alcatraz island tour this quarter related to the early extinguishment of debt that I will cover later. And while there were other differences between the 2 quarters, on balance, we were able to match last year's earnings despite the effects alcatraz island tour of the Costa Concordia incident and the continued economic turmoil in Europe.
Net yields improved alcatraz island tour 0.1% on a constant-currency basis and declined 2.4% on an as-reported basis. We did receive the benefit of approximately 200 basis points on a constant-currency basis from changes in deployment in our international distribution systems that we have discussed in the past.
Both ticket and onboard revenue came in better than our forecast. Ticket revenues benefited from strong close-in alcatraz island tour demand on most itineraries, including Europe. But for the quarter, yields alcatraz island tour in Europe were down 5.4%. Excluding Europe, net ticket yields were up 2.6%, which is quite gratifying, recognizing the ground we needed to make up after a weak wave season. Net onboard revenue yields alcatraz island tour increased 3.5% for the quarter, and as I mentioned earlier, alcatraz island tour came in better than our forecast.
On the costs side, excluding fuel, our net cruise costs were up 2% on a constant-currency basis and down 0.2% on an as-reported basis. Approximately alcatraz island tour 220 basis points of the constant-currency increase was due to the structural changes I mentioned previously. Fuel consumption was in line with our guidance alcatraz island tour and average pricing came in about 0.5% higher.
Looking forward, the demand environment has been relatively steady since our last call. Adjusting for remaining inventory, bookings over the last 3 months have been running about 4% ahead of the same period a year ago. As we stated in the press release, we expect yields in the fourth quarter to increase approximately 1%. Currently, the fourth quarter sailings, our load factors are slightly below last year but at slightly higher APDs. Caribbean itineraries, which account for 42% of our inventory in the fourth quarter, are showing the greatest strength. On the other hand, European itineraries, which account for 27% of our capacity, alcatraz island tour are forecasted alcatraz island tour to be down slightly.
alcatraz island tour On Slide 3, we have provided a breakdown of our capacity allocations for 2013. Overall, capacity will increase 1.3%, with the largest increases alcatraz island tour coming in the Asia/Pacific region. Our European exposure is being reduced by approximately 10%, and Europe will now account alcatraz island tour for 27% of our product offering. Caribbean will remain our largest itinerary group and will account for 44% of our deployment. We believe it is still too early to provide specific guidance for 2013, but we do want to be transparent and share with you what we know so far.
On Slide 4, we have graphed our current booked load factors for each of the next 4 quarters and illustrated how each compares alcatraz island tour to the same point in time last year. And while we have intentionally left the numbers off the axis fo