The New Ship Shape

The Ritz-Carlton's Evrima bills itself as a yacht. Another way to look at it: as a cruise ship for people who hate cruises

- ADAM ERACE

A GREAT SEAWORTHY lasagna dislodged from the San Juan cruise terminal and heaved into the inky Caribbean, drifting toward the horizon in a blaze of lights and music.

I watched the giant ship-Norwegian Cruise Line's Epic-from the serene starboard observation terrace of Evrima, still in port nearby. Constructed in Spain and christened in Lisbon last November, Evrima is the firstborn of the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, a sleek blue barracuda at 623 feet long. She's tiny compared with Epic.

A crew member looked over at the Norwegian mega-ship. "I used to work on that," she told me. When I asked her whether she preferred that or Evrima, she gave me a look that said, "Really?" 

Evrima is a cruise ship for people who hate cruises. She also represents a new trend: luxury hotel brands fishing for a piece of the global cruise industry, which is expected to grow 11% a year and cross $15 billion by 2028, according to a 2022 report. It's a sector that has proved preternaturally resilient, weathering nasty norovirus outbreaks, criticism of its horrendous environmental record, and labor abuse exposés-all before the global COVID pandemic wrought headlines like "Stranded at Sea" and "Hell of a Cruise." For the legions of cruise devotees, it's all water under the captain's bridge.

"The minute luxury cruise lines started sailing again, my clients were ready," says Mary Ann Ramsey, a Florida-based travel advisor with 40 years' experience. The trade organization Cruise Lines International Association forecasts that oceangoing ships will carry 31.5 million passengers in 2023, topping the pre-pandemic volume of 29.7 million in 2019.