The next chapter of luxury cruising favors smaller ships and bigger adventures, and Atlas Ocean Voyages has two extraordinary journeys already on the horizon.
By Jenny Starr Perez
Sightseeing in Europe, Africa or nearly anywhere else worth crossing an ocean to visit is a beautiful thing. Seeing it as your ship sails gracefully into port, preferably while you are holding a very good coffee and someone else handles the luggage, is arguably better.
As travelers increasingly trade sprawling cruise ships for more intimate vessels, the appeal of luxury expedition cruising is easy to understand. Smaller ships can reach places their supersized counterparts cannot, while yacht-style accommodations and highly personalized service make the journey itself part of the destination.
For travelers already plotting their 2027 and 2028 calendars, Atlas Ocean Voyages offers an intriguing proposition. Its fleet of expedition yachts carries fewer guests than traditional cruise ships and combines sophisticated accommodations and dining with itineraries designed around meaningful time ashore. Current ships World Navigator, World Traveller and World Voyager will be joined in 2028 by Atlas Adventurer, the line’s first luxury expedition sailing yacht. Before then, there is Antarctica.
On March 13, 2027, World Traveller departs on a 16-night expedition to Antarctica and the Falkland Islands with a familiar South Florida face aboard. Zoo Miami Foundation Goodwill Ambassador, wildlife photographer and six-time Emmy Award winner Ron Magill will join the voyage as a guest expert, bringing more than four decades of wildlife and conservation experience along for the ride.
The itinerary travels from Ushuaia, Argentina, across the Drake Passage and into a landscape of glaciers, enormous tabular icebergs, penguins, seals and whales. Zodiac safaris and guided shore landings provide closer encounters, while the Falkland Islands add dramatic coastlines, settlements and five species of penguins to the journey.
Magill’s presence makes an already exceptional itinerary considerably more interesting. He will host presentations on wildlife and conservation, lead photography sessions and, conditions permitting, join select Zodiac excursions and shore landings. With World Traveller accommodating fewer than 200 guests, encounters with the wildlife expert need not be confined to a lecture hall.
A conversation might just as easily happen over dinner or while photographing wildlife from the deck.
For travelers whose greatest luxury is time, however, Atlas is thinking much bigger for 2028.
The 128-night Grand Odyssey Expedition aboard the new Atlas Adventurer departs Kobe, Japan, on Nov. 30, 2028, and ultimately arrives in Cape Town, South Africa. The journey forms the centerpiece of the line’s new Extraordinary Expeditions collection, a series of extended voyages through Asia and Africa created for travelers interested in experiencing entire regions at a more deliberate pace.
Atlas Adventurer itself is part of the allure. Debuting in November 2028, the all-suite luxury expedition sailing yacht will combine the romance of sailing with the ability to reach both celebrated destinations and lesser-visited ports. Multiple dining venues, wellness experiences and expedition programming round out life aboard.
The Grand Odyssey also includes extended overnight stays and three exclusive shoreside experiences, allowing the itinerary to unfold as something more substantial than a succession of passport stamps.
And therein lies the wanderlust-worthy appeal of this new generation of cruising. There will always be a place for flying into a city, checking into a hotel and efficiently working through the must-sees. But for those with the time and inclination, arriving by sea offers another experience entirely. In an age of faster everything, there is something wonderfully luxurious about letting the world arrive one port at a time.
Photos courtesy of Atlas Ocean Voyages