Let's Talk About the F1 Effect

There are two races that occur at the Monaco Grand Prix each year. One for the world’s best racing drivers. The other for the world’s top luxury brands. Think cars, fashion, watches, yachts, cruise ships — and now, with the entrance of Explora Journeys and its exclusive F1 partnership, comes the yacht-cruise category (also known as floating hotels).

You can actually see this play out from the air. F1 fans flying in via helicopter got a glittering view of Port Hercule, as a fleet of sleek superyachts and branded cruise ships closed in on the Monégasque circuit. A bright red Tag Heuer logo-balloon floated over one ship, as Alo’s athleisure models peacocked on the Silver Fox beside it. The message? If you’re docked here, you’ve already won the race. Because trackside positions in this port are among the most valuable temporary waterfront real estate in the world, costing a minimum of €500,000 for the four-day race week, according to local charter brokers — and that's before the cost of the yacht itself.

After all, Monaco is the crown jewel of the racing calendar. It’s why LVMH signed a ten-year partner deal with F1 in 2021, and in 2026 Louis Vuitton became the title sponsor of what is now the Formula 1 Louis Vuitton Grand Prix de Monaco, effectively planting its fashion flag on the Principality. In an interview with WWD, Pietro Beccari, chairman and CEO of Louis Vuitton, described it as “probably the most prestigious, the most chic and the most glamorous Grand Prix of the year.” That the 19-year old Italian driver Kimi Antonelli just made history winning the race for Mercedes’ Formula One team and its billionaire co-owner Toto Wolff, is almost beside the point. (Yes, that’s Naomi Campbell spinning the F1 opening party).

For Explora, which launched its first F1-themed sail last year, what matters is that they can offer guests exclusive access to the phenomenon, including Q&As with F1 drivers, celebrity-studded soirées, grandstand tickets, F1 Paddock Club passes and the ultimate up-close view of the action in something called a pit lane walk.

They can pull this off because Explora and its parent company MSC Group are owned by the Aponte family, the world’s largest container shipping dynasty, founded in 1970 by Gianluigi Aponte. They are the only cruise line F1 Experiences works with directly, as the official cruise partner of Formula One through 2030.

“No other cruise line offers any kind of sports event experience like the F1 Explora sailings,” says Miroslav Atanasov, a travel advisor with the Ovation Network, a New York-based luxury travel agency. “We had several requests in November and December, but unfortunately none of the waitlists cleared. The ship was completely sold out.”

Explora’s President Anna Nash, who joined Explora Journeys in 2024 after rising to Chief Commercial Officer at Aman, is making the most of it. “We’re privately owned, which means we have permission to have a voice with confidence, a bit of a bold voice, changing the narrative that surrounds cruising and ocean travel,” she said in our interview. “I think events like this are really important to show off our incredible ship, but also that we’re a lifestyle brand looking to do things differently and to welcome a different audience onto our ships.”

She’s the first to acknowledge the stigma that surrounds global cruising, and is actively moving away from traditional cruise industry conventions. Explora’s entire strategy is built around appealing to travelers who might never have considered a cruise in the first place.

But her competitive set in the ‘yacht cruising’ category have similar notions. The world’s most prestigious hotel brands, namely Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton, Orient Express and Aman each have yacht-style ships of their own. They all distance themselves from the cruise connotation, preferring to be thought of as floating hotels that can count on brand loyalists to embark on a “frictionless” ocean voyage, and enjoy the same level of service they already know and trust. They’ve even got penthouses and residences to hard-sell on board, because ships depreciate faster than their hotel assets can appreciate on land.

Still, no one else hosted the Monaco party — with Europe’s largest drone show.

The F1’s official Monaco opening party was held aboard Explora I this year, and in true competitive racing fashion, it was designed to top all others. Firstly, forget fireworks; it featured Europe’s largest drone show to date.

Exactly 3,050 drones lit up the night sky over Monaco, forming the shapes of the cars, the drivers, and most importantly, the sponsors’ logos (Explora, MSC Group and F1). The music was courtesy the DJ-stylings of multi-talented supermodel Naomi Campbell and her sidekick, Bob Sinclair, who any early-aughts club kid knows is the French icon of the house music movement, spinning hits like “Love Generation” and “World, Hold On.” And, of course, it was all fueled by Moët & Chandon, the official champagne of Formula 1. Without disclosing how much this all cost, Nash remarked: “It’s a big investment. But there’s definitely a justification. We’re still a young brand, of course.”

A young brand with leverage. For scale, Explora I is 248 meters (814 feet) long — roughly the length of two and a half football fields — and carries up to 922 guests in 456 suites. That’s certainly large enough to be used as the stage where F1 announced the Las Vegas Grand Prix’s 10-year contract extension. It will remain on the calendar through 2037. That’s not Explora adjacent to the action; that’s Explora as the literal venue for an F1 calendar announcement. So, it’s not just about brand proximity, it’s about F1 routing its own news through Explora’s ship.

For those in the business of F1, it was a big deal that celebrity Susie Wolff, former driver and Managing Director of Formula 1’s all-female F1 Academy, came onboard the Explora to help broadcast the Vegas Grand Prix announcement. Her presence essentially validated the F1-Vegas alliance. “I have to give a lot of credit to the Las Vegas team. Our paddock was right next to the F1 paddock, all lit up, and it really was a moment where I thought wow, F1 Academy has arrived. It was that moment in Las Vegas where it blew me away just how far we’ve come,” she said, the day before her husband Toto Wolff took home the constructor’s trophy for the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team.

Sure, the internet gawked as Ferrari racer Lewis Hamilton’s girlfriend Kim Kardashian made her pit walk appearance, and actor Patrick Dempsey turned up. But the Wolff’s were really the star of the show; and Explora played their willing host.

Much has been written about the sports tourism boom, which according to new research is projected to reach more than $927 billion in 2026. For Explora Journeys, sports and sports sponsorship are central to its brand identity. It’s also the main reason Nash can call it a ‘challenger brand.’

“In fact, I’d even say that for our wider brand of businesses within MSC Group. We’re family owned, and a lot of the sports sponsorships have genuinely come from authentic connections that the family have, Formula One being one of them. And through Formula One connections we were introduced to Jannick Sinner [the Italian tennis player, currently ranked number one in the world]. So they feel very natural in the way that they’ve come about.”

To be clear, all of this is very recent. In 2025, Explora Journeys officially signed Jannik Sinner as its global brand ambassador, and in 2026 became title partner of the Swiss SailGP Team.

“When we work with sports personalities like Jannick Sinner, he represents the type of professional that has shared principles. You look at Sinner, and you see him as the sports personality, but actually, behind him, there’s a whole team working together with one shared vision for success. You see the captain on the ship, it’s one figurehead, but actually there’s a number of team members behind working together to deliver the service and to be our best, so there’s definitely shared values around precision, wanting to be the best,” Nash explains, before adding: “Of course, it also gives us access to a younger demographic.”

The timing here is key. Explora Journeys currently sails two ships, with the third taking its maiden voyage in July, and three more Italian-designed vessels scheduled to join the fleet by the end of 2028. It’s a break-neck pace for any cruise company, especially one that recently lost $40 million as a result of Iran war-related cancellations of trips to Saudi Arabia, along with another $4 million lost for a cancelled trip to Turkey. Geo-political risk is nothing new for the industry, but this is where events like F1 can actually pick up the slack.

If you were on Explora for Monaco last year, the biggest takeaway is that Explora didn’t treat 2026 as a repeat. They leaned much harder into making the ship itself part of the Grand Prix experience rather than simply a luxury hotel floating in Port Hercule.

Because F1 is a case study in event hospitality, and the ticketed event is just the beginning. Just comparing the standard sail rates to the F1 package add-ons you’ve got the ultimate up-sell. What passengers paid to be onboard the Explora I for five days during the French Riviera’s most iconic event ranged from $25,000 to more than $100,000, depending on room category and race passes.

The starting price per guest for an entry-level Ocean Terrace Suite is €12,500 euro. If you want 3-day access to the Paddock club — an exclusive, multi-tiered lounge and terrace directly overlooking the circuit — that costs €27,500 euro per person. And three days of grandstand tickets (glorified trackside aluminum bleachers) sets you back another €14,000. According to Explora staff, 100 guests onboard bought access to the Paddock club and the grandstand. That’s more than €5 million in revenue, just from F1, not counting rooms. [Ed note: These prices have been triple fact-checked].

For the record, these prices are far more expensive than the company’s typical sail. For example: entry level prices are €1,960 per guest for four nights in January, from Marseille to Rome. Even so, the repeat passengers who sailed with Explora before knew the prix for Grand Prix would be steep. Robert and Susie Vergona, a retired couple from Sydney, Australia were originally convinced by Virtuoso Travel agents to cruise in the first place. They started on Silversea, then tried Holland America before calling it quits after Covid. Explora Journeys’ “sophisticated, elegant ship, the quality of the service and the whole experience” is what drew them back in — and ultimately signed up for Monaco because Robert, a former dentist, is a major F1 fan.

If you’re wondering how they’re pulling this off, it’s important to know that MSC isn’t a hotel company. It’s the world’s largest container shipping company by both fleet size and cargo capacity, controlling over 21% of global container capacity. And it’s running Explora at a pace and risk-tolerance only a shipping family would attempt. You could say they’re testing the limits of what’s possible in yacht-cruising. But what I see in Explora is a brand that reflects the spirit of the sports it chooses to sponsor: fast, hyper-competitive, team-oriented — and playing to win.