Ilma

Overview

Ilma is the second vessel of The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection and the ship that turned a hotel brand's experiment at sea into a fleet. Delivered in 2024 by Chantiers de l'Atlantique, she is nearly twice the tonnage of the collection's first yacht, Evrima, and the first LNG-powered vessel in the fleet — the fact the dataset itself records in its fate note. The dataset row for Ilma is unusually thin: it carries no IMO number, no tonnage, no dimensions, no builder and no capacity, only a launch year of 2024, her operator and her active status. This guide therefore keeps the spec box exactly as the dataset gives it, and supplies the missing substance in prose from operator and trade sources, flagging the dataset's gaps in the batch notes rather than silently rewriting its record.

Key specifications

From The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection's own published fast facts and builder reporting: Ilma measures 46,750 GT, is 241 m (790 ft) long with a beam of about 29.1 m, and accommodates 448 guests in 224 suites, served by a crew of 374 — a staff-to-guest ratio the line quotes at roughly one to 1.2, among the highest at sea. Her guest-to-space ratio is quoted at 104.3 GT per guest. She has eleven decks. She is powered by liquefied natural gas, the first vessel in the collection so equipped, with the dual-fuel plant intended to cut emissions on the longer ocean passages her size makes possible. None of these figures appears in the dataset row; each is stated here from the operator's material and contemporary delivery reporting, and the dataset should be enriched from those sources in a future pass.

Design and construction

Ilma was built by Chantiers de l'Atlantique at Saint-Nazaire, France, one of two sister superyachts ordered from the yard in March 2022 — a significant change of direction from the collection's first ship, built in Spain. Her exterior was designed by the Helsinki studio Aivan, deliberately in the visual language of a private superyacht: a sleek, low, graceful profile rather than the stacked-deck silhouette of a conventional cruise ship. Interiors were by AD Associates, with lighting design by DPA. Construction began with keel-laying in March 2023; she was floated out in September 2023; and she completed sea trials in the Bay of Biscay between 16 and 20 May 2024, testing seakeeping, noise, vibration and wind comfort before final outfitting. All accommodation is in suites with private terraces, including a small number of very large upper-category suites of over 1,000 square feet — a layout only possible at her exceptional space ratio.

Naming, launch and maiden voyage

The collection names its yachts with evocative single words drawn from the languages of the sea regions it frequents — Evrima from the Greek for "discovery", Luminara from the Latin for "light". The meaning attached to Ilma is reported inconsistently in secondary sources, and this guide accordingly records the name without asserting a derivation. She was floated out at Saint-Nazaire in September 2023 — the event the dataset's "launched 2024" approximates; 2024 is properly her delivery and entry-into-service year. Her maiden voyage sailed on 2 September 2024 from Monte Carlo to Rome, and she was formally christened later that year, in December 2024 at Fort Lauderdale, according to cruise-industry reporting.

Career by operator

Hers is the shortest and simplest career table in this batch: one name, one operator, no transfers. The context that matters is fleet-level. The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection — operated by an investor group under licence from the hotel brand, rather than owned by Marriott — launched its first ship, Evrima, in October 2022 after long delays. Ilma followed less than two years later at nearly double the size, and the pair's reception justified a third, Luminara, in 2025. Ilma thus marks the moment the concept graduated from a single delayed prototype to a repeatable, orderable ship type — the point at which hotel-branded cruising stopped being a curiosity and became a segment that rival brands, from Four Seasons to Orient Express, moved to enter.

Onboard character

The defining decision aboard Ilma is scale-within-scale: a 46,750 GT ship — the size of a substantial conventional cruise ship of the 1990s — carrying only 448 guests. Everything follows from that ratio. Accommodation is entirely suites with terraces; public space per guest is lavish; and the ship is arranged as a resort rather than a transport system, with five restaurants, six bars and a wine vault reported at delivery, a spa, a pool deck, and a marina platform at the stern from which guests swim, kayak and paddleboard directly into the sea when the ship is at anchor. The design language, inside and out, is that of a contemporary luxury hotel and a private yacht rather than a cruise liner: restrained, residential, and quiet. Where her Chantiers de l'Atlantique fleetmate in this batch, Harmony of the Seas, solves the problem of 6,000 guests with urban-scale planning, Ilma solves the opposite problem — how to make 448 guests feel the ship is theirs.

Major refits and incidents

None are recorded, and none should be expected yet: Ilma entered service in September 2024 and has accumulated no refit history beyond routine warranty and maintenance work, and no incident of note in the sources consulted. Her early career milestone was ceremonial rather than corrective — the December 2024 christening at Fort Lauderdale, several months after her maiden voyage, reflecting a delivery schedule compressed by her autumn debut. This section will grow only when the ship does.

Sister ships and class

Ilma's true sister is Luminara (2025), the second of the two Saint-Nazaire superyachts ordered together in 2022, built to the same 46,750 GT design with 226 suites for 452 guests. Evrima (2022), though the collection's first ship and Ilma's fleetmate, is not a sister: she is a smaller, earlier, Spanish-built design of 25,400 GT and 298 guests, from which the class that Ilma leads was scaled up. The two-ship Saint-Nazaire design is therefore best treated as its own class, with Ilma as its lead ship.

Fate and where she is now

Ilma is in active service with The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, the dataset and all consulted sources agree, and as one of the newest ships in this directory her future is simply the continuation of her present: a young, LNG-powered superyacht at the head of a growing class, in a market segment — hotel-branded ultra-luxury cruising — that barely existed when her keel was laid. If the segment endures, Ilma will be remembered as the ship that proved it could be built at scale.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ritz-Carlton_Yacht_Collection; The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, "Ilma Fast Facts" (operator press material, September 2023 float-out release); The Maritime Executive, "Ritz-Carlton's Second Luxury Superyacht Cruise Ship Completes Sea Trials" (May 2024)