Ritz-Carlton join the cruising world!

It’s recently been announced that Ritz-Carlton will launch a cruise ship.

Apparently this has been 12 years in the planning according to Doug Prothero, managing director of the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection.

He also stated the group will build three 298 passenger luxury cruise ships!

“This is slightly different from a traditional cruise start up.  A big part of this is tying it into the sales and marketing of Ritz-Carlton. It’s essentially a co-managed venture.”

With the first ship set to be delivered in late 2019, bookings will open next May with two further ships set to follow in 2021 and 2022.

The ships will cost $225 million each!!

It’s said that the sailings will be seven to ten night cruises with four port visits on the seven night cruise and six or seven port calls on the longer cruises. They hope to target the top 1 percent of global travellers.

The itineraries for 2019 are being worked on now and are expected to include the Mediterranean and Northern Europe.

Other destinations for the first two ships include the Caribbean and Latin America, while the third ship will be based in the Pacific.

Based on the size Ritz Carlton are quoting, I imagine the ships will be a similar size to the Silversea Silver Cloud – I wonder if they’ll be as luxurious? I’d like to think so with that brand name.

I wonder if they’l include the ultra-luxury items that some of the other luxury cruise lines do like drinks, excursions, gratuities and the like? It’ll be interesting to see where they’ll make their mark in the industry and if the current 6* cruise lines will do anything to retain their client base to stop people being tempted to stray.

Exciting times though in the industry (although I’m pretty sure Ritz Carlton will be direct sell only) but still, it’ll be interesting to see how it goes!

What do you think?

Lx