Not truly new to the cruise industry, the concept of yacht-style cruising is gaining steam, with several yacht-style cruise ships on order from The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, Scenic, and Emerald Cruises. They join SeaDream Yacht Club and Windstar Cruises in offering a small-ship style of cruising that has more in common with private yachting than traditional cruising.

Travel Market Report reached out to some of the major players in the yacht-style cruising niche to find out how it’s different from small-ship cruising, what “yachting” implies, and whether it’s only for the ultra-affluent.

Buzz Word or True Differentiator
Is yacht-style cruising different from small-ship cruising or is it merely branding and marketing? If it’s truly a subset of small-ship cruising, then all yacht cruises should have something in common with each other than makes them markedly different from other small ship cruises and cruise lines.

“In today’s market place, the term ‘small ship cruising’ is used liberally and means different things to different people,” Adrienne D’Annunzio, manager of SeaDream Yacht Club, charity & PR. “There are cruise lines touting their ‘small ships,’ which carry anywhere from 260+ to 1,200+ people. It’s an increasingly popular style of cruising and increasingly unclear what ‘small’ means.”

As a subset of…