Four Seasons I sailed on 20 March 2026 — the first day of spring, and the sixty-fifth anniversary to the day of the opening of the first Four Seasons hotel.
Position
Six hundred and seventy-nine feet, 95 suites, 222 guests, and no interior cabins at all: every suite has floor-to-ceiling windows and a private terrace. Eleven dining venues, a rotating chef-in-residence, a children’s club, and a staff ratio approaching one to one. The maiden season ran the Greek islands, the Riviera and Croatia, with the Caribbean following. Four Seasons II is due in 2028 with multi-bedroom suites aimed at families.
The date, which is the point
The sailing was set for 20 March deliberately: Four Seasons opened its first hotel on the first day of spring in 1961, and Isadore Sharp — LHL-P-002 — and Rosalie Sharp were named godparents of the ship. A company that has been careful with its own history for sixty-five years does not choose that date by accident, and the Library records it as a statement about continuity rather than a coincidence.
Why it is in the Library
The claim is space. Four Seasons states fifty per cent more living area per guest than any competitor at sea, and the absence of interior cabins is the structural proof of it — a ship that cannot sell a windowless room has committed its economics to a single class of guest. That is a model, and it is being copied.
What this model does not solve
Space per guest is bought with berths, and a ship with no cheap rooms has no ballast when a season goes badly. The chef-in-residence programme also concedes something: eleven venues at sea need names from land to fill them, which is an admission that the brand alone does not yet carry the dining.