Inside The Luxury Hotel Yacht Race With Marriott Luxury President And Ritz-Carlton Yachts CEO
The ‘hotel yacht’ is one of the most competitive and exciting new areas of luxury travel. The Ritz-Carlton was the first to market with the launch of The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection’s first yacht Evrima in 2022, with other leading luxury hospitality brands including Four Seasons and Aman quickly announcing plans to follow suit. Now, Ritz-Carlton is gearing up for the inaugural voyage of its second yacht Ilma in September 2024, a move that it hopes will further solidify its place as the leader of the luxury hotel yacht race.
Ahead of the launch, two of the project’s leading lights, Tina Edmundson, President, Luxury at Marriott International, and Jim Murren, CEO, Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, reveal everything we need to know about the new launch. They also reveal exclusive insights on why Marriott chose to branch into the yachting sector in the first place, their learnings from their first years on the water, and what differentiates their yachts from a cruise ship – and indeed a private superyacht.
Why did Marriott decide to enter the yachting space – and why now?
Tina Edmundson: We have actually been talking about this space for a decade. It’s interesting because I've had many people ask, ‘is this a post Covid thing?’, when actually, it's not. Covid has not caused new behavior, it's accelerated behavior. What we’re seeing with our customers is that people have changed their mindsets. They want experiences over things and the yachting experience is coveted because it’s about removing friction from people's stays and having this all-inclusive, amazing experience. We know that they are looking for these experiences outside of hotels so our goal is to keep them in our ecosystem. We want to be able to provide all of those types of experiences for our customers.
