What it's like to sail on the luxurious Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection's Ilma

One such port is Saint-Tropez in France, where Ilma stopped for about 24 hours on its maiden voyage between Barcelona and Monaco. While anchored a short distance from the port, smaller craft tendered guests from ship to shore and back at about 30-minute intervals. It was an excellent feature, allowing freedom of movement, so guests could spend as little or as long ashore as they wanted.

“We try to give [guests] time to enjoy the destination. For example, in Saint-Tropez, we anchored overnight. This is to experience the destination as it should be—Saint-Tropez has great nightlife, discos, beach clubs,” says Ernesto Fara, president and CFO of the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection. “Big cruise ships cannot do this for a number of reasons: they aren’t able to dock at these destinations, and they also have a tight schedule so you’ll be off the boat at 8am and back on board at 4pm. We are way less stringent.”

Despite this flexibility, a majority of guests were quick to return to the ship, realising it’s hard to beat what’s on board— whether that’s the Ritz-Carlton Spa or one of Ilma’s most beautiful features, the marina, complete with a floating platform with shaded cabanas and netted swimming areas.

“It’s the largest floating platform in the world, where people can relax, get into the water, go kayaking and have that connection to the sea,” says Murren. “Cruise ships just don’t have that kind of access [to the water].” 

To dine, Ilma has five restaurants—from casual dining options to Beach House, which serves a pan-Latin menu developed in collaboration with James Beard Award-winning chef Michael Mina, and Memori, where you’ll find Japanese favourites from sashimi to miso black cod—each with regularly rotating menus to avoid the risk of becoming mundane.

All dining is included, except at Seta su Ilma, a fine-dining restaurant by chef Fabio Trabocchi that celebrates the flavours of the sea. “The level of service you get [on a yacht] is more than you would in a hotel,” says Fara. “The hotel is a compressed experience: you sleep there, maybe you get breakfast and perhaps a few meals in between, but on our yachts, we are lucky to have so many interactions with the guests. This means it’s important to keep things exciting in the kitchen." 

The service and accommodation are nothing less than you’d expect from luxury brands such as these. But the greatest luxuries of slow travel are the little things: like stepping out of your suite onto the balcony in the morning, with no clue as to where you are, and not caring; or sitting on a ship’s floating terrace—complete with a bar and a caviar station, it’s a pretty neat set-up to catch those Côte d’Azur sunsets. 

“Our guests are less interested in consumable items and more interested in a visceral emotion that they get from a journey,” says Ritz-Carlton’s Murren. “An excellent yachting experience is one where people feel like they’re one with nature, one with the water, they’re enjoying something new and exciting and different that they can share with their friends."

Next year, The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection’s third vessel—Luminara—will take the brand to new waters with a series of voyages in the Asia-Pacific region, starting with a 14-night maiden voyage from Singapore to Hong Kong, homes to two of RitzCarlton’s most celebrated properties. Other routes include a ten-night Tokyo round-trip voyage during sakura (cherry blossom) season, when petals blanket the grounds of Osaka Castle and accent the views of Mount Sakurajima from Kagoshima. 

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