The expedition yacht market emerged in the last two decades as the cruise industry’s response to the demand for the authentic remote experience that the large cruise ship cannot provide. The Scenic Eclipse, the Silversea Silver Origin and Silver Endeavour, the Ponant Le Commandant Charcot, the Viking Octantis.
These are the small expedition ships that carry between 100 and 300 passengers to the Antarctic, the Arctic, the Galapagos, the remote Pacific, and the other environments that the large cruise ship infrastructure cannot reach. They are genuine improvements over the large cruise ship in the specific quality of the destination access they provide. They are also still cruise ships.
The Scenic Eclipse carries up to 228 passengers. The Ponant ships carry 92 to 270. The Viking expedition ships carry 378. These are small numbers in the cruise industry context. They are large numbers in the context of the twelve-person offshore sailing community. The expedition yacht at 200 passengers in the Galapagos is in the Galapagos with 200 people.
The Eighty2 at the Galapagos is in the Galapagos with twelve. The expedition yacht’s expert lecture programme, the zodiac excursions to the wildlife sites, the underwater camera footage screened in the expedition lounge — these are the expedition yacht’s version of the direct offshore experience. They are the managed presentation of the remote environment rather than the direct inhabitation of it.
The Expedition Yacht’s Commercial Model
The expedition yacht retains the cruise industry’s commercial model despite the smaller scale. The gratuity at €15 to €25 per person per day — on a ten-day Antarctic voyage at €20 per day, €200 per person in mandatory gratuities. The excursion programme that charges separately for the kayaking, the helicopter flight over the glacier, the submarine dive below the ship, the speciality expedition experiences that the standard expedition ticket does not include.
The Scenic Eclipse submarine experience: approximately €500 to €1,000 per person above the cabin rate. The helicopter excursion at €300 to €600 per flight. The premium cabin categories that include experiences the standard cabin does not, the veranda suite that includes the expedition zodiac priority boarding, the owner’s suite that includes the private excursion with the expedition team.
The expedition yacht cabin rate ranges from €600 to €3,000 per person per day depending on the line, the itinerary, and the cabin category. The Scenic Eclipse in the Antarctic: €10,000 to €30,000 per person for a ten-day voyage, or €1,000 to €3,000 per person per day before the excursion supplements and the gratuities. The total cost of the ten-day Scenic Eclipse Antarctica voyage with moderate excursion spending: €12,000 to €35,000 per person, or €1,200 to €3,500 per person per day.
What the Expedition Yacht Is Trying to Be
The expedition yacht market was built around the insight that the person who wants the authentic remote experience cannot get it from the large cruise ship and that a smaller, more capable vessel in the genuinely remote destination provides something closer to the experience the concept was designed around. This insight is correct. The execution, the hundred-passenger ship with the cruise industry’s commercial model applied at smaller scale, is the compromise that the commercial viability of the expedition yacht format requires.
The Naora circumnavigation is the expedition yacht concept without the compromise. Twelve people rather than two hundred. The offshore sailing passage rather than the motor vessel transit. The direct inhabitation of the offshore environment rather than the managed presentation of it from the expedition lounge. The five-year programme rather than the ten-day itinerary. The year-round community rather than the voyage acquaintances.
The daily rate that the Ocean Explorer membership produces rather than the €1,200 to €3,500 per day that the expedition yacht charges for the shorter version of a similar ambition. The expedition yacht tried to build what Naora already is. The scale and the commercial model prevented the full version from emerging. Naora is the full version.
