Four Seasons or Your Own Yacht: Two Very Different Weeks in Greece

Hotel brands have gone to sea, and our clients ask us about them every week.

Four Seasons Yachts and The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection run ships in Greek waters today. Orient Express Corinthian enters service in October 2026 with Greek voyages from 2027, and Aman’s Amangati arrives in spring 2027. They are good ships, and they are a different holiday from a private charter. Which one suits you comes down to one number: how many of you are coming.

A private yacht in Greece takes up to 12 guests and every one of them is yours. The route is set each morning, the chef cooks for your table, and the whole boat is yours for the week. For a group of 8 to 12 who want that, nothing on a ship comes close. For 2 people the answer is different, and we will say so on the phone.

What Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton, Aman and Orient Express Run

These are not repurposed cruise ships, and they are not yachts. Four Seasons Yachts and The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection are small ships run to hotel standards and sold by the suite.

Every accommodation is a suite with a terrace, and the entry Four Seasons suite is 473 square feet. What differs is everything around it.

94 to 450 Guests on a Branded Ship, 12 on a Charter Yacht

It is a ladder, not a binary. A mainstream cruise ship carries 3,000 or more, a branded ship 94 to 450, a crewed charter yacht 12. Each rung down means fewer people and more places.

The gap narrows at the top. Amangati takes 94 and Corinthian 110, so against those 2 the argument rests on route control and the chef, not scale. Against a 448-guest Ilma, scale carries it alone.

The 12 is the legal ceiling for guests sleeping aboard a standard commercial yacht, as our page for groups over 12 explains. Above it you are into Passenger Yacht Code vessels over 500 gross tons, licensed for up to 36, a small and expensive fleet. In practice a group of 14 takes 2 yachts.

Four Seasons I runs around 200 crew for 222 guests. Our Greek yachts at 150,000 euros a week carry 7 to 11 crew for 12.

The difference is not headcount. A Four Seasons crew is shared across 222 strangers. Your 9 are shared with nobody.

Their Greek Route Is Set Months Ahead, Yours Is Set Each Morning

Their Greek calls are not the tourist list. Four Seasons Yachts publishes Karystos, Ios, Folegandros, Livadi on Serifos, Nisos Rineia and Fiskardo alongside Athens, Santorini, Mykonos, Hydra, Antiparos, Corfu, Parga and Chania.

The honest difference is that the list is finite and published months ahead, and it cannot change because you liked a bay on Tuesday.

Scale still counts. A 448-guest ship reaches far fewer of the Cyclades, Saronic and Ionian anchorages, and arrives at each one with hundreds of people.

Then there is the meltemi. When it blows through July and August, tender calls at Santorini and Mykonos get scrubbed and a big ship sits it out or skips the port.

Your captain moves to the lee side of the next island and the week carries on. A 448-guest ship cannot stop because you liked a bay at 3pm. That is a day on a Greek charter.

Their Dining Questionnaire Is Our Preference Sheet, Without the Chef

Four Seasons Yachts includes the suite, breakfast in designated restaurants, in-suite soft drinks, wifi, marina watersports, gratuities, and taxes and port fees. Lunch, dinner and alcohol are a la carte, and it tells you to budget 250 dollars per person per day.

The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection includes more: dining, most drinks including alcohol, 24-hour in-suite dining, wifi, watersports and gratuities. Reviewers, not the operators, report a 600 dollar per couple upcharge at Ilma’s Italian restaurant and 30 dollars for breakfast in a Four Seasons suite.

One of those Ilma reviewers described a questionnaire sent months ahead asking about dining preferences, then said the ship ignored everything on it.

The Ritz-Carlton dining questionnaire is the same document we call a preference sheet. On a charter your chef shops for it and rewrites it on Wednesday when you want lighter dinners.

That is structural, not bad service. A chef cooking for 12 builds a menu around 12 people. A galley cooking for 448 cannot.

A Four Seasons Week for 2 Costs 24,500 to 31,500 Dollars

The ships publish in dollars and we quote Greece in euros, so we convert once, at the end.

At a working average of about 3,000 dollars a night, 3,000 x 7 = 21,000 dollars a suite. One detailed review put a Mediterranean week nearer 28,000. Occupancy does not change either number.

Add food and drink at the 250 dollars per person per day Four Seasons recommends: 250 x 2 x 7 = 3,500 dollars. So 21,000 + 3,500 = 24,500 dollars, and 28,000 + 3,500 = 31,500 dollars. Across 2 people that is 12,250 to 15,750 each, taxes, port fees and gratuities included.

The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection is cheaper and more inclusive. Its 7-night Mediterranean voyages start around 11,900 to 12,300 dollars per person, so their side of this comparison runs roughly 11,900 to 15,750 dollars a head.

A Greek Charter for 12 Costs About 222,000 Euros a Week

That 222,000 euros buys a 40m yacht for 7 days, not 12 seats on one: the sundeck, the aft deck, the jacuzzi, the tenders and the toys, a chef and 8 or 9 crew, and nobody else aboard.

Nothing on that list needs booking and nothing is shared. The toys are on the platform when you want them, and dinner is at 10pm if you say so.

A typical crewed yacht for 10 to 12 guests in Greece runs 100,000 to 250,000 euros a week. Take 150,000, the lower middle of that band and where most of our Greek weeks for 12 land.

Greek charter VAT is 13 percent: 150,000 x 0.13 = 19,500 euros. APA is the running-cost fund for fuel, food, drink and berths, budgeted at 35 percent: 150,000 x 0.35 = 52,500 euros, spent against receipts with the unspent balance returned to you.

So 150,000 + 19,500 + 52,500 = 222,000 euros, and 222,000 / 12 = 18,500 euros a head. A crew tip sits outside that, 5 to 15 percent of the base and at your discretion. The branded fares include gratuities and ours does not.

Per Head the Ship Wins, and Here Is What Our Extra Buys

Convert it rather than dodge it. At about 1.16 dollars to the euro, 18,500 euros is roughly 21,500 dollars a head against their 11,900 to 15,750. Per person the ship is cheaper at every group size, here by 35 to 80 percent.

What the extra buys is the whole yacht instead of 1 suite on it, a chef who cooks for your 12, and a week that changes when you do.

Size matters to that math. At 8 guests the same week is 27,750 euros each, so the case is strongest at 12 and weakens fast below 10.

For that 150,000 broken down yacht by yacht, see what 150,000 euros a week actually buys. Our Greece yacht charter cost page covers the rest of the fleet, and we compare a charter against a hotel or villa week here.

When We Tell Clients to Book the Ship Instead

We lose these, plainly:

• 2 people. The fare is per suite. Nothing we sell competes at that group size.
• Solo travelers. You cannot charter a yacht alone. They will sell you a suite.
• Anyone who wants 1 fixed number. Their fare is close to it. If that is your priority and you still want a yacht, our all-inclusive Greek charters price the week as a single figure.
• Anyone who wants to decide nothing. No broker, no preference sheet, no route conversation.
• Guests who love the vessel itself. A reviewer watched the tender go ashore and noted most guests stayed aboard. If the ship is the holiday, 448 people is no problem.

The Question That Decides It: Does the Week Bend to You?

Both products bend. A branded ship bends to operations, and its booking terms say the captain may change ports for safety, regulatory or operational reasons. A charter yacht bends to the guests, daily, on request.

So ask one thing. When you change your mind on Tuesday afternoon, does anything change? On a 448-guest ship the answer is no, and that is not a fault. On your own yacht it is the product.

Tell Us the Group and the Week, and We Will Price Both

If you are 2, we will say so and point you at the ship. If you are 8 to 12, send us your dates, the group size and a line on what you want the week to feel like. We come back with yachts, numbers and the route we would run.

Or start with the fleet: high end yachts and yachts under 250k.

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