Miami Herald

Hotelier Four Seasons is set to cruise with luxury yachts but don’t call it a cruise

- BY ANNA JEAN KAISER akaiser@miamiheral­d.com Anna Jean Kaiser: 305-376-2239, @annajkaise­r

With the help of Miami cruise-industry veterans, the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts is entering the luxury-cruise business with a high-end, 95-suite mega yacht slated to hit the ocean in 2025.

“This is going to be an extraordin­ary, unique, hybrid product. It has no equal — there is no such animal in cruising and nothing like it in yachting,” said Four Seasons Yachts CEO Larry Pimentel, a Miami cruise executive with decades of experience running luxury cruise ships, including Carnival Corporatio­n’s Seabourn and Azamara, formerly part of the Royal Caribbean family.

“I was tasked with creating the best product at sea; it’s a tall order, but an exciting one,” he said, explaining that he was told not to create a cruise ship or a copy of a yacht. “We created our own vision of what the best product at sea could be.”

Four Seasons Yachts, whose corporate headquarte­rs is in Miami, will be a three-ship fleet, with the first yacht debuting in November 2025, the second in 2026 and the third in 2027. Italian ship builder Fincantier­i is building the yachts, which will cost a combined $1.2 billion. The first ship will cost a staggering $4.2 million per suite to build and have room for about 200 passengers.

Four Seasons’ cabins won’t be your average cruise-ship suites. Starting at 590 square feet, some suites will have modular walls for families and groups to combine rooms. Some will have their own swimming pools and certain ones will have attached “staff cabins” for guests who have security guards, caretakers or nannies accompanyi­ng them. The largest cabin will be the “funnel suite,” a 9,600square-foot, four-story suite with glass walls facing the ocean.

The yacht will come with 11 bars and restaurant­s, a spa and fitness center. The yacht’s main swimmingpo­ol floor will be able to rise, spilling the water out and creating a flat space for shows, events and weddings.

Pimentel said the yacht designs were inspired by Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis’ yacht, the Christina O, and said the style that Four Seasons is aiming for is the old-world glamour of the world’s first cruise ships with modern, sleek design.

To get into yacht cruising, the well-known Four Seasons hotel brand partnered with Philip Levine, a former Miami Beach mayor who made his fortune in the cruise industry, and Nadim Ashi, the investor behind the Surf Club, a Four Seasons resort in Surfside. Together, the two run Marc-Henry Cruise Holdings, which is the owner and joint operator of Four Seasons Yachts.

Levine and Pimentel pitched a yachting branch to the Four Seasons in 2009, but the company didn’t bite. After teaming with Ashi, who was already in business with the Four Seasons at the Surf Club, they eventually got Four Seasons to sign on. MarcHenry Cruise Holdings and Four Seasons announced their luxury-yacht venture at the Monaco Yacht Show in September.

Levine and Ashi see themselves as ushering the Four Seasons hospitalit­y brand into ocean tourism. Their agreement is not a franchisin­g or licensing agreement. The ship and its staff will be trained and operated by the Four Seasons. ButMarc-Henry

Cruise Holdings has the expertise in ship constructi­on and vessel operations to bring the brand to the high seas.

“The Four Seasons had no knowledge of cruising or the yacht industry,” Levine said. “We put together this amazing team of people to create what we believe will be a new dimension to yachting, and we don’t call it cruising, we call it yachting.”

The Four Seasons’ seafaring venture comes as competing luxury hotelier RitzCarlto­n debuted its first luxury yacht in October. Pimentel and Levine said they think the Ritz-Carlton yacht will do well and believe their Four Seasons ships cater to a different, higher-paying clientele. They also pointed out that the Ritz-Carlton’s yachting line is a licensing agreement, unlike their partnershi­p.

Pimentel and Levine said it’s too early to share details on the cost of sailing on a Four Seasons yacht but said it will be comparable to the pricing at Four Seasons hotels and resorts.

When completed in late 2025, the first yacht will sail the Mediterran­ean in the summer and the Caribbean in the winter. But you’re less likely to see the Four Seasons yachts in the traditiona­l mega ports, where thousands of passengers are unloaded onto an island for a few hours or a day.

“You will not see us in those ports,” Levine said. “We are a yacht, a mega yacht. We’ll be visiting smaller, less accessible ports around the Caribbean. On a cruise, the cruise [line] tells you what you’re gonna do. On Four Seasons

Yachts, you tell us what you’d like to do.”

 ?? Courtesy of Four Seasons Yachts ?? Four Seasons Yachts’ first ship will debut in 2025 with 95 suites. Cabins start at 590 square feet. Some will have swimming pools. The largest cabin will be the ‘funnel suite,’ a 9,600-square-foot, four-story space with glass walls facing the ocean.
Courtesy of Four Seasons Yachts Four Seasons Yachts’ first ship will debut in 2025 with 95 suites. Cabins start at 590 square feet. Some will have swimming pools. The largest cabin will be the ‘funnel suite,’ a 9,600-square-foot, four-story space with glass walls facing the ocean.

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