"What's up with yacht cruises?"
Answering the question I've heard most often lately
Hello everyone,
Happy Friday.
Summer holiday content is in full force, and thanks to a handful of hospitality brands, you’ll be seeing a lot more of these “yacht cruises” on your feed or in the Med. Today’s letter will be the first of many that attempt to understand the yacht cruise business. If you have any questions, feel free to share by direct replying to this email.
Best,
Nadine
If you’re new here, or want to catch up on the best of The Stanza, I’d recommend that you start here.
In today’s newsletter:
Everyone asks me whether yacht cruises will work. The better question at this stage is: what is the true guest acquisition cost? Erina Pindar, COO of $1B luxury travel advisory shares some interesting data points on 2026 booking patterns.
Two C-suite Aman alumni are now running yacht cruise businesses with opposite playbooks. One holds rate and builds six ships, while the other stays under 100 suites and unbundles the fare. Both told me how they're thinking about it.
A ship is a depreciating asset with no land underneath it. So what are Four Seasons, Aman, and Orient Express actually underwriting when they put their names on hulls?
Read previous issues of The Stanza here.
Wood Fire Cooking and Open Kitchens - F&B Consultant
Stefano Gallizio cut his teeth cooking over open fire under Francis Mallmann in the south of France before taking that philosophy around the world. He went on to help build Osborn’s Fire Kitchen in Australia’s Southern Highlands, widely credited as Australia’s first outdoor fire-cooking restaurant, and later served as Executive Chef at Ember in Byron Bay.
His work sits at the intersection of sensory experience and operational discipline: the kind of food that guests can see being made and remember long after the meal. He now partners with hospitality venues, wineries, hotel groups, and investors to develop restaurant concepts from the ground up.
If you are building a restaurant concept that highlights wood fire cooking and are seeking advice, reach him at stefanoggallizio@gmail.com.
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Pages from the guest book of Munich innkeeper Hedwig Sonnenschmidt include illustrations from the artists of Simplicissimus, a German weekly magazine (1896–1967) that published political and social satire. The guestbook was auctioned today at Karl & Faber (Lot 738).
“What’s up with yacht cruises?”
There’s a lot of chatter about the yacht cruise business, and lately I’ve been fielding the same question from a lot of people around the viability of this emerging category: “Do you think they’ll work?”
The way I like to look at that question is more: what problem are they solving, and where is the demand coming from? What is the true “guest acquisition cost” for these brands, as the type of person who goes on these cruises is likely spending money that would otherwise be allocated for hotels on a yacht cruise? And as for the investor’s perspective: what’s the long term value creation opportunity? Hotels are on land, which is a finite resource. Typically, a lot of value in hotels comes from the real estate itself for this reason (note: see my previous newsletter on irreplaceable assets). If you can, in theory, build a million luxury cruise ships, and if ships are by definition, depreciating assets, how do you underwrite the terminal value? Or are these ships seen as tax efficient cash flowing assets?
The comp set
Five luxury brands, four of which are hotel operators, now have ships in the water or under construction, and the fleet sizes tell you a lot about each one's bet:
