RITZ CARLTON YACHTS

Eighteen months before its scheduled debut of the first Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection ship, executives offered the first clue as to pricing for the luxury brand, saying a representative fare in the Mediterranean would be about $5,600 for a seven-day itinerary.

Competitors of the 298-passenger RitzCarlton ship will include the 112-passenger ships of SeaDream Yacht Club. An online price check of seven-day SeaDream Med itineraries this summer revealed a midlevel suite price of $5,699.

Another luxury line, Silversea Cruises, said a suite on its Silver Spirit, currently being overhauled in drydock in Sicily, will cost $5,600 on its first seven-day voyage after upgrades are completed in May.

After a series of seven- and 10-day voyages there, it will move to the Adriatic in the spring of 2020, sail the Mediterranean and up to northern Europe and the Baltic from July through September before offering Canada/New England itineraries in the fall of 2020.

A second ship will add itineraries for the St. Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes in the summer, while a third will go to Asia, Prothero said.

A sample itinerary in the Caribbean, he said, might include St. Lucia, Bequia, Mustique and Tobago Cays. All are small islands within a leisurely sail of each other and more likely to be visited by yachts than by cruise ships.

The accommodations include two Owner’s suites, 12 Loft suits, 18 Grand suites, 27 Signature suites and 90 Terrace suites. The Loft suites are duplexes, with bedrooms on the lower level, built so that the ship could be all-balcony. The Terrace suites can be combined to reduce the total number of suites from 149 to 107 for charters.

The five dining venues on the ship will include a main dining room, as yet unnamed, that seats 140; an Asian fusion restaurant; a poolside grill; a seafood grill; and Aqua, a restaurant being developed by three-star Michelin chef Sven Elverfeld, who runs a restaurant by that name at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Wolfsburg, Germany.