TAMPA, FL — Sex sells vacations, too.A Miami-based company that plans to provide exotic shipboard vacations for liberated adults who embrace non-monogamous relationships has chartered its first ship from a major cruise line.
YOLO — short for “you only live once” — is offering a seven-night package aboard a Carnival Cruise Lines ship. All the passengers will be swingers. The first cruise is scheduled to depart Tampa, FL, April 26 with ports of call in Cayman, Cozumel, Belize and Roatan, Honduras.
Oh — and there will be “play at sea” too, according to YOLO Cruises President Marlene Brustle. According to the company’s website, the adventure will offer “an open, erotic atmosphere … full nudity at the pools, daytime pool parties and specially planned sexually themed parties in the evening.” Themes for the first cruise’s parties include “naughty schoolgirl” and “masquerade.” Brustle told USA Today special playrooms will be available “for the voyeurs and more adventurous on board.”
According to the travel industry, sex can be a good vacation selling point. After all, as USA Today travel blogger Gene Sloan pointed out, Las Vegas’ “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” adult-themed advertising campaing was “hugely successful,” even becoming part of the popular vernacular. In addition, land-based resorts like Hedonism in Jamaica, Sea Mountain Resort in California and Desire Resorts in Mexico have catered to sexually liberated adults for the past 20 years.
The cruise industry, though, has been slow to embrace the trend. However, the recent popularity of niche charters seems to have convinced at least one cruise line to give controversy a try — especially when the controversial group has become so mainstream that now even staid CBS airs a prime time series called “Swingtown” (about, you guessed it, swingers).
According to Brustle, who managed travel agencies for nearly two decades before founding YOLO, about four million swingers reside in the U.S. alone, and the international population is significantly larger.
YOLO hopes to offer three or four swingers cruises annually. Prices for the April excursion start at $949 per person.
