A great seaworthy lasagna dislodged from the San Juan cruise terminal and heaved into the inky Caribbean, drifting toward the horizon in a blaze of lights and music.
I watched the giant ship—Norwegian Cruise Line’s Epic—from the serene starboard observation terrace of Evrima, still in port nearby. Constructed in Spain and christened in Lisbon last November, Evrima is the firstborn of the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, a sleek blue barracuda at 623 feet long. She’s tiny compared with Epic.
A crew member looked over at the Norwegian megaship. “I used to work on that,” she told me. When I asked her whether she preferred that or Evrima, she gave me a look that said, “Really?”
Evrima is a cruise ship for people who hate cruises. She also represents a new trend: luxury hotel brands fishing for a piece of the global cruise industry, which is expected to grow 11% a year and cross $15 billion by 2028, according to a 2022 report. It’s a sector that has proved preternaturally resilient, weathering nasty norovirus outbreaks, criticism of its horrendous environmental record, and labor abuse exposés—all before the global COVID pandemic wrought headlines like “Stranded at Sea” and “Hell of a Cruise.” For the legions of cruise devotees, it’s all water under the captain’s bridge.
“The minute luxury cruise lines started sailing again, my clients were ready,” says Mary Ann Ramsey, a Florida-based travel advisor with 40 years’ experience. The trade organization Cruise Lines International Association forecasts that oceangoing ships will carry 31.5 million passengers in 2023, topping the pre-pandemic volume of 29.7 million in 2019.
And they’re nurturing new generations of cruisers. Millennials represent a massive growth market, and high-end hoteliers like Ritz-Carlton are betting they can even onboard those who see cruising as the epitome of gauche excess and would rather swim to St. Barth’s than get there on Carnival. “Younger clients—maybe their parents or grandparents are die-hard cruisers, and they didn’t want any part of that,” Ramsey says. “Now, with Evrima, they don’t have to be on their grandparents’ cruise.”
It’s telling that Ritz-Carlton’s parent company, Marriott (Marri-yacht?), never refers to Evrima in such plebeian terms as “ship” or “boat.” The word “yacht” evokes exclusivity, spaces for wining and dining a Supreme Court justice or, as on HBO’s The White Lotus, luring a ditzy heiress to her demise. Leading up to my five-night cruise through the Virgin Islands (at $4,500 per person, all-inclusive, it was the least expensive voyage offered), I wondered, Could a vessel with room for 298 passengers and 246 crew truly feel like a yacht instead of a cruise ship?
There certainly is more room to stretch out than on a traditional cruise. I never had to save a lounger at the pool. I never saw a line, conga or otherwise. Evrima has 20% more public space per passenger than conventional cruise ships, and her upcoming sisters, Ilma (sailing 2024) and Luminara (2025), will be even more spacious, says Doug Prothero, founder of the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection. “People have busy lives, and the last thing they want to do on vacation is feel like they’re stuck in the middle of busy,” he says. “If you’re unloading with 6,000 people on a shore excursion, that’s kind of what it’s like to go to work in Manhattan.” Docked in St. Croix opposite Royal Caribbean’s mammoth Voyager of the Seas, I watched that exact scenario play out: a crush of humanity passing around an ebullient Moko Jumbie stilt dancer like a river around a tree.
Until the flood subsided, I stayed on board Evrima, noting her small fortune in leggy orchids, her bar cart stocked with rare Macallans, her boutique aglitter with Cartier timepieces and Chanel bags. After a knot-destroying massage, I decompressed in the spa’s relaxation room on Deck 9 with its chaises facing the sea—and no other guests.
Each morning around 7 a.m. I was the barista’s only customer in the Living Room, and I’d carry my croissant and cappuccino to the observation terrace to soak in St. John or Jost Van Dyke. I saw two other passengers there in four mornings. At S.E.A., the restaurant developed by Michelin-starred chef Sven Elverfeld, the six-course paired menu unfolded in exquisite solitude before a foursome arrived as I gathered the last beads of Imperia osetra caviar off a golden scallop. It felt like a yacht.
Each morning, I’d carry my croissant and cappuccino to the observation terrace to soak in the views. I saw two other passengers there in four mornings.
By 2026, Four Seasons, Orient Express, and Aman will debut superyacht cruises, but for now Ritz-Carlton owns the waters. Currently in the Mediterranean and Aegean ($7,900 to $15,500 for five to 11 nights), Evrima returns to the Caribbean in November. Her voyages include some ports that larger lines visit (Nassau, Barbados), but mostly she anchors off lesser-known isles: Martinique, Great Exuma, the Grenadines, and Virgin Gorda, where I spent the day at the Rosewood Little Dix Bay, a legendary property originally built by Laurance Rockefeller in 1964. The resort butler giving me a tour of a tree-house-style villa asked what boat I’d arrived on, and I reflexively responded, “The yacht.”
“You have to have your yacht take you to the Dogs,” he said, referring to an archipelago nearby. “The diving is excellent.”
I tried clarifying—It’s not my yacht—but he wasn’t getting it. Once you hear “yacht,” there’s not much else to hear. I said I’d tell the captain.
This article appears in the June/July 2023 issue of Fortune with the headline, "The new ship shape."
