AS MORE AND MORE HOSPITALITY COMPANIES SET SAIL (pun intended) with branded yachts and boats, a question arises: How do you keep the brand going strong once the guest has left the experience of the property? “Most of the opportunities presented to us prior to this one were larger ships.
And we always questioned whether we could make it unique and also provide the ultra-luxury experience on a large vessel,” Grisius says. Enter this opportunity: Owned by private-equity firm Oaktree Capital Management and built in collaboration with Tillberg Design of Sweden, the 620- foot “yachts” hold up to 298 passengers in 149 cabins. Itineraries include the Caribbean, Mediterranean, Canada and the U.S. eastern seaboard. “If you add one more layer to that, these people will be arriving on land in one location where hopefully we have a Ritz-Carlton hotel,” says Grisius.
FILLING A GAP “In a sense, they’re filling a gap that the ultra-luxury lines have given up,” says Ross Klein, a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland and an expert on the cruise ship industry. “It’s not so much that they’re creating a new niche as moving into a niche that’s been abdicated,” he adds. “The larger (cruise) companies have all moved to economies of scale where bigger is better, and they’re less oriented to quality than they are to quantity.” The vessels will have five food and beverage outlets with a Ritz-Carlton-run spa, three pools and a lounge/wine bar; service will be all-inclusive. While pricing depends on itinerary and season, a seven-day Mediterranean cruise during off-season will start at US$5,600 per person.
Some differences from the property level include the staff-to-guest ratio – almost one-to-one – and 24-hour food service. Singapore-based Como Hotels and Resorts, owned by billionaires Ong Beng Seng and Christina Ong, has the Cameron, a 68-foot yacht introduced in 2016 to offer an overnight trip between its Maldives resorts, Cocoa Island and Maalifushi. Initially, according to Chris Orlikowski, Como’s group director of PR and communications, the company wasn’t sure whether the yacht would be a fixed offering, due to a mixture of both demand and cost. A full day on the Cameron costs US$5,200. “And, then, there was also the issue of being able to offer a consistent Como experience on the yacht,” says Orlikowski. Here, too, F&B played a role — catching a fish and having it freshly prepared on board, for one — but so too did service.
According to Pietro Addis, general manager at Como Maalifushi, it was discovered early on that it was necessary to have a captain who knew the area and was willing to stop in off-beat locations. “There’s a romance and special quality to voyages by sea, and the legacy brands can seize on this characteristic to re-infect some of the romance that’s sadly been lost in many of their chains as scale and the pursuit of global domination, consistency and efficiency have begun to conflict with the thrill of original discovery,” he says.
