As the appetite for luxury cruising grows, seeking truly exceptional experiences comes with a ship-sized price tag
4 min
A private driver arrives at your home to transport you to your cruise suite, where you are welcomed aboard with a glass of Dom Perignon and introduced to your personal butler — exhale, your luxury voyage has begun.
Welcome to a new level of luxury cruising where rare and remote experiences are the currencies and every opulence you thought you knew on land is also available at sea.
“The luxury experience at sea has started to fragment, it’s different things to different people,” says Joe O’Sullivan, managing director of small ship booking specialist, Cruise Traveller. “For some, it’s the whole ethos of the white glove service, the personal touches like the butler who remembers your favourite drink. But another big driver in the luxury market is experiences, the people who want to camp on the ice in Antarctica or paddleboard off the bow of the ship.”
We did all the hard work for you and found five of the most luxurious experiences you can have at sea in 2025 — and what they cost.
Want to organise a private dinner for 12 in your suite? No problem. What about a night in a luxury hotel before the ship sails? Of course. A growing number of ships are offering that VIP treatment once reserved for world leaders and celebrities. And for the right price, your wish is their command.
The Owner’s Residence aboard an Explora Journeys ship is about as luxe as it gets on sea. We’re talking an outdoor terrace that extends the full width of the ship, marble ensuite with a large bathtub, private steam room and Dyson appliances and a butler that packs and unpacks, launders and presses your clothes like an old-school majordomo. Of course, this will set you back almost $200,000 per couple for a two-week cruise.
For a similar, though no less opulent experience, Explora Journeys have four categories of Ocean Residences below this.
“Explora Journeys is the luxury division of MSC Cruises, but don’t let the mass-market MSC brand put you off, this is like Volkswagen owning Porsche and Audi,” says Mark Trim, managing director of Flat Beds Tour + Cruise, who was lucky enough to spend two weeks in an Ocean Residence with his family earlier this year. “And whilst it is a small ship, there was a lot of space, and the wellness facilities, bars and shopping were also incredible, highlighted by the inclusion of the exclusive Rolex boutique on Deck 4.”
The VIP treatment aboard a Regent Suite on select Regent Seven Seas ships carries a price tag of around $16,000 a night. For this you get 413sqm of space (more than double the average ship suite) at the bow of the ship with ocean views from two wraparound balconies.
And forget an ensuite, in the Regent Suite, it’s called a master bathroom spa retreat and includes a treatment area, full sauna and multi-jet shower, heated relaxation loungers, a heated spa and unlimited, complimentary in-suite spa treatments.
You also get access to The Study, a Private Dining Room for up to 12 guests, and a night in a luxury hotel pre-cruise including breakfast and transfers.
A 14-day cruise from Monte Carlo to Rome in a Retreat Residence suite on Explora II departing May 2025 is from $22,650 a person twin share and from $74,000 a person twin share in an Owner’s Residence suite.
A night in a Regent Suite aboard Regent Seven Seas Explorer, Grandeur or Splendor is from $16,000.
There are a few things you can be sure of when you step onto remote Snow Hill off the east coast of Antarctica — you will be surrounded by thousands of Emperor penguins and you will be part of a select few to do so.
Getting access to Snow Hill, where up to 10,000 breeding penguins and their offspring live, is by helicopter only.
Five years ago, Scenic launched their discovery yacht class called Scenic Eclipse equipped with two onboard helicopters and a custom submersible to take travellers on these types of rare adventures.
“We’ve seen significant demand for immersive experiences, particularly for unique offerings like our helicopter excursions,” says Anthony Laver, Scenic Group general manager, sales and Marketing, APAC. “This growing interest reflects a broader trend towards intimate, immersive and ultra-luxury journeys that go beyond traditional cruising. And given its sleek yacht design, Scenic Eclipse is also capable of sailing into places many ships are not able to reach.”
The 22-day Antarctica, South Georgia and the Falkland Islands itinerary departing Buenos Aires in February 2025 is from $32,020 a person twin share. Helicopter excursions operate from this cruise at an extra cost.
Go hunting on dog sleds with Inuit masters, set off on a polar hike and experience the midnight sun. It may sound clichéd, but these are just some of the once-in-a-lifetime experiences you can have onboard Ponant’s first luxury hybrid electric polar exploration ship, Le Commandant Charcot.
“Unlike more standard polar cruise activities, travellers won’t travel on Zodiacs very much at all, as everything is done by dog sled,” says Ponant expedition experience director, Jose Sarica. “The charm of this voyage to the far north-west of Greenland is that it offers some very immersive experiences in icebound landscapes, including hiking and snowshoeing, traditional Inuit kayaking, beluga and narwhal watching and even snorkelling through the ice in a wetsuit.”
The 11-day Inuit Spring of Ammassalik aboard Ponant’s Le Commandant Charcot departing May 2025 is from $26,180 a person twin share (polar trek experience $1550 extra).
Is there anything more luxurious than time, philosophically speaking? What about if you combine it with a prolonged journey aboard a six-star ultra-luxury ship? Sign up for the experience with Silversea who feature a range of Grand category itineraries designed to let you immerse yourself in your destination.
One of their most popular voyages is the 47-day circumnavigation of Australia which visits 23 ports and includes door-to-door private transfers from your home, your own butler to cater to your needs at sea, as well as all shore excursions and business class airfares.
The 47-day Grand Australia voyage departing Melbourne in October 2025 aboard Silver Nova is from $51,200 a person twin share with door-to-door service.Â
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Meta is betting on a human-first AI future, but growing legal battles and declining public trust are putting Mark Zuckerberg’s vision to the test.
3 min
“Call us optimists. Call us dreamers. Call us whatever the hell you want, but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds. The future is for everyone.”
That ad copy is from the voice-over of a July Meta Platforms META -3.38%.
 spot that’s been part of a public-relations blitz to position Meta as the humanist AI company. The message was undercut by the ad’s inclusion of David Bowie’s “Five Years,” a brooding 1972 song about an impending apocalypse. But this week CEO Mark Zuckerberg left no ambiguity, publishing a 6,500-word manifesto—about 10 times the length of this newsletter—with a title that echoed the ad: “The Future is for Everyone.”
That seems to be Meta’s new tagline. In light of sinking public opinion and the company’s thousands of lawsuits from states, school districts, parents, and users, Meta’s public relations have been defensive. This push represents a return to offense, with a chance to distinguish Meta’s approach to AI from other labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, or SpaceX SPCX +9.65%.
“It is surprising that the discourse from many developing AI is so filled with doom,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity’s relevance would rush to build that future.”
Zuckerberg frames what sort of future we build with AI as the central issue of our time. “We believe that delivering superintelligence to everyone is the way to answer this question,” he says. “This has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where individuals can use this powerful new capability to reach their full potential, pursue their interests, and improve their lives and the world more than ever before.”
The flood of words belies the situation on the ground in mid-2026. Americans, at least, have a love-hate affair with social media. A November Pew Research Center poll reported that 71% of U.S. adults used Facebook, and 51% used Instagram. Worldwide, 3.6 billion people use at least one Meta app every day.
But in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in July and August, 61% of respondents said they wanted more government oversight of social media, and two-thirds supported laws to keep children under 16 years old off the platforms. When it comes to Meta in particular, in the 2026 Axios Harris 100, an annual poll about corporate reputation, Meta placed 96th out of 100. It’s only above two other social media companies, Chinese ultracheap retailer Temu, and Spirit Airlines, a defunct air carrier. Regarding ethics, Meta came in last, and it was only ahead of TikTok in trust.
The steady drip of headlines in the teen social media trials isn’t helping. Last week, Meta lost a judgment in New Mexico state court that raised their liability in that relatively small jurisdiction to nearly $1 billion dollars. On Wednesday, jury selection began for a federal case with four states suing Meta over addictive product design, and false marketing that said its platforms were safe for teenagers. In July, Meta claimed that the states are asking for a total of $1.4 trillion in damages, in addition to design changes in the apps. This is part of a multidistrict litigation, where thousands of federal trials with social media defendants are coordinated in Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ district courthouse in Oakland, Calif.
There is a separate such group of thousands of cases in California state court, mostly with individual plaintiffs. The steady drip of bad headlines from the courts will continue unless Meta decides to settle en masse.
Meanwhile, in the second quarter, Meta booked “$2.40 billion of charges related to legal proceedings,” according to its quarterly filing. That may be just the beginning.
Zuckerberg spent 6,500 words getting his utopian message out, but I can sum it up in two: Trust us. The evidence is that Meta has a long way to go to win back that trust.
