kabarsula Matt Masson on why Ritz-Carlton wanted CT Partners on its superyacht bandar SLOT INDONESIA

The travel industry isn’t short of conferences, but CT Partners’ upcoming event is set to be a little different.

This year, the group is taking its 2026 annual conference to a luxury superyacht.

According to CT Partners CEO Matt Masson, Ritz-Carlton saw an opportunity to put a growing group of high-value travel sellers on board and let them experience the product first-hand.

The conference is expected to attract slightly more delegates than last year, with the audience particularly weighted towards premium and luxury travel.

“I think they wanted to use it as a … famil element,” Masson told Travel Weekly.

“There’s also a famil element by getting everybody on board the yacht and experiencing it will hopefully help their sales in the future.”

A captive audience of luxury sellers

The conference will bring together owners and senior executives from CT Partners’ 35 member agencies, with the group spanning premium and luxury leisure, MICE and corporate travel.

Masson said that audience was a key attraction for Ritz-Carlton.

“They saw the opportunity of getting all these great businesses on board, particularly because it’s all the owner managers of, you know, premium leisure, MICE, and corporate travel companies,” he said.

The opportunity also comes as CT Partners members become increasingly familiar with the luxury yacht product.

“We do have already some members selling the Ritz-Carlton yacht for groups and for private travel,” Masson said.

“Some of our members have booked it for their own incentives.”

More floating luxury hotel than cruise ship

For Masson, experiencing the product first-hand is particularly valuable because Luminara is positioned differently from a traditional cruise ship.

“It really does feel more like, say, a floating luxury hotel,” he said.

The accommodation is a major part of that proposition, with Masson highlighting the size of the suites.

“The lead-in suites, I think, are about 40-something square metres,” he said.

“That’s unusual. Like on an ocean cruise, generally your lead-in room type might be 15 or 20 square metres.”

“Their suites are very spacious. They’ve all got balconies.”

The dining experience also stood out to Masson, who described one venue offering an 11-course degustation menu with paired wines.

A growing luxury yacht category

Ritz-Carlton was among the first luxury hotel brands to enter the yacht market, but Masson said it has since been joined by major competitors including Aman and Four Seasons.

“They were the kind of first to market,” he said. “There has been some other competitors coming up in that space, like Aman, Four Seasons has launched their products. So it seems like they’ve trailblazed this new category.”

Masson said the growing luxury yacht category is also creating opportunities in the corporate and incentive market.

“Corporates are interested in doing something quite well instead of just doing another hotel incentive program,” he said.

He believes that reflects a broader shift in what companies expect from business travel, with groups increasingly seeking experiences that bring people together.

“People are looking for that kind of engagement with their colleagues when they are on a business trip, rather than it just being kind of a bit more transactional, as it was in the past.”

For Ritz-Carlton, the CT Partners conference offers a chance to put a large group of influential sellers inside its product for several days — effectively turning the conference into a product experience as well as an industry event.

The CT Partners Annual Conference, themed The Art of Travel, will run from November 15 to 20. It begins at W Shanghai The Bund before delegates board Luminara for a three-night voyage to Hong Kong.