When I walked off Explora I in Miami last fall, newly converted from card-carrying hotel snob to something dangerously close to a cruise evangelist, I texted my husband a link to Explora Journeys‘ Asia routes and told him — didn’t ask, told him — we were booking.
Apparently, someone at Explora Journeys was paying attention.
Not that I would take credit for any of this, of course. I’m sure the brand’s new global campaign — unveiled Wednesday and built around the irresistible premise that maybe the best hotel in the world doesn’t have an address — was already well in development before one travel writer had his road-to-Damascus moment on the Atlantic.
Developed by McCann Paris and directed by award-winning director and photographer Jonas Lindstroem, the campaign is built around a single, deceptively simple word: Maybe.
(Explora Journeys)
Maybe the ocean is more than a passage between destinations. Maybe a ship can be a sanctuary. Maybe the most compelling destination in luxury hospitality sails the sea rather than sitting on a street.
The campaign rolls out across TV, digital, print, social, and out-of-home channels globally, and leans into a cinematic aesthetic that feels more like a contemplative art house short than anything you’d expect from the travel industry. The brand is explicitly moving away from the legacy imagery that has long defined cruise marketing — the confetti cannons, the waterslides, the relentless pageantry — and replacing it with stillness, wit, and a visual intelligence that trusts its audience to feel something rather than be told what to feel.
“By embracing a more playful, cinematic narrative, we are inviting the most discerning guests to see ocean travel from a new perspective — one where the ocean is not simply a passage between destinations, but a place for enrichment, restoration and personal discovery,” Anna Nash, president of Explora Journeys, said in a statement. “The campaign comes with a deliberate twist: it reframes the very idea of a hotel, proposing that the most compelling destination in hospitality may not sit on a street, but sail the sea — fluid, evolving, and endlessly inspiring.”
(Explora Journeys)
The timing is pointed. Explora I launched in July 2023, Explora II followed in September 2024, and a third ship — the LNG-powered Explora III — arrives in July 2026, with three more vessels on the water by 2028. This is a brand past the proof-of-concept phase and now making a full-throated argument for its place not just within the cruise sector, but within the broader luxury hospitality conversation entirely.
That case got a significant boost recently when Explora Journeys and Hilton announced a partnership giving the loyalty program’s 230 million Hilton Honors members the ability to earn and redeem points on Explora voyages, a move that effectively builds a new on-ramp from the hotel world directly to the gangway.
That argument is not a hard one to make. The fear that kept me land-locked for years (the dread of the “cabin,” of trading the sweeping lobby of a great hotel for a porthole and a bunk) dissolved the moment I opened the door to my Ocean Terrace Suite. It beat the entry-level inventory at more than a few celebrated urban hotels: heated bathroom floors, a Dyson Supersonic, a private terrace with a daybed where I kicked back with a book and oceanfront view.
(Explora Journeys)
The campaign’s central premise — “the finest of everything, everywhere, all at once” — sounds like marketing until you’ve stood on the sun deck with a glass of something fabulous in your hand and realized there’s genuinely nowhere else you’d rather be.
“The campaign offers a radically new perspective on life at sea, driven by emotion, sensation and a subtle sense of wit,” Julien Calot, creative chief officer at McCann Paris, added. “Fresh, punchy and unlike anything currently seen in the industry, it focuses on the feelings that stay with you long after a Journey ends: calm, space, pleasure, movement and quiet moments of joy.”
Explora Journeys has always played a quiet game of seduction with the hotel world. Its restaurants don’t feel like ship dining rooms; the sushi at Sakura was sliced with the precision you expect in Tokyo, the Dover sole at Fil Rouge deboned tableside with old-school hospitality flair. The spa experience rivaled treatments I’ve had at properties I’d stack against the best in the world. The “Maybe” campaign takes that implicit argument and makes it explicit, with enough creative confidence to resist over-explaining.
“At the heart of the campaign’s hero film and numerous striking visuals is a simple but powerful idea,” said Liam Fearn, executive creative director at McCann Paris. “An Explora Journeys ship is more than a ship. It’s a place that moves with you, adapts to you and opens new perspectives every day.”
For travel advisors watching this space, the campaign is a signal worth heeding. Between the new Hilton Honors partnership and a fleet that will grow to six ships by 2028, Explora Journeys is actively recruiting the traveler who has never set foot on a ship — the hotel loyalist, the suite collector, the person who reads the spa menu before booking a room. The whole point of “Maybe” is to make them realize they’ve been ocean travelers all along; they just didn’t know it yet.
Speaking from experience: Once the conversion happens, it sticks. My hotel snob credentials remain intact, but I simply now accept that those standards apply just as readily at sea. Explora Journeys didn’t ask me to give anything up. It just expanded the map.
Maybe that’s the whole point.
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