Spotlight ON: Christian Glauser Benz, Senior Advisor & Brand Ambassador at Maybach Ocean Club

From the Road to the Sea: How Maybach Is Building a Private Club Around a Gigayacht

Christian Glauser Benz, Senior Advisor & Brand Ambassador for Maybach Ocean Club, on co-ownership, designing for stillness, and why a heritage logo isn't enough

When most people hear the name Mercedes-Maybach, they think of handcrafted interiors, quiet power, and some of the most refined cars on the road. Christian Glauser Benz spends his days thinking about something very different: what it means to live inside that brand for weeks at a time, at sea.

Maybach Ocean Club will take the automotive name onto the water aboard Beyond Horizons, a 155-meter gigayacht set to sail in 2029. For Glauser Benz, the timing comes down to a shift in how wealthy travelers think about luxury. "Customer values are pivoting from traditional asset ownership to access and community," he says. "The ultra-wealthy are increasingly valuing hassle-free experiences over owning things."

Not ownership, not charter

The club sits somewhere between the two familiar models. It's capped at 300 members worldwide, each buying into a fractional co-ownership structure that gives them up to four weeks on board a year. Itineraries follow the seasons, with summers in the Mediterranean and winters in the Caribbean, and a concierge team handles the details.

The ship has 30 suites, each 800 square feet and identical by design. No member owns a particular suite; assignments rotate with each stay. It's a deliberate choice meant to keep the community on equal footing. The appeal, Glauser Benz explains, is the superyacht experience without the headaches of owning one: crew, maintenance, logistics, all taken care of.

Designing for stillness

The biggest surprise in translating a car brand into hospitality, he says, was how different the two experiences are in time and motion.

"Automotive design centers on motion and brief interactions," he says. "When a driver steps into a Maybach, they experience the brand for a few hours at a time, mostly looking forward at the road. On Beyond Horizons, guests live inside that design language for weeks."

That meant designing for stillness and extended time in a shared, carefully curated space, something car designers rarely have to consider. The goal, as he puts it, is to move from "a beautiful machine that moves you" to "a destination that stays with you."

The Roux family at sea

Food is a major part of the plan. Maybach Ocean Club has partnered with the Roux family, the French culinary dynasty behind London's Le Gavroche and The Waterside Inn in Bray. Brothers Michel and Albert Roux opened both more than four decades ago, and both earned three Michelin stars. The Waterside Inn has held three stars for more than 40 consecutive years, the only restaurant outside France to do so.

Chef Alain Roux and his team will shape the ship's entire dining program, from the design of the restaurants and the signature menus to training the culinary and front-of-house teams. Roux will also curate the wine and beverage program and connect members with his network of artisanal producers. Whether it's dinner in the main restaurant, lunch by the pool, or a meal in the suite, the approach stays the same: seasonal ingredients, balanced flavors, and generous hospitality.

Choreographed, not engineered

Glauser Benz will join the Luxury Without Limits: Extending the Brand Experience panel at ILHA INSPIRE in Orlando this December. His advice for hoteliers and brand leaders looking at adjacent categories is direct.

"Hospitality cannot be engineered. It must be choreographed," he says. "We have to design for emotional resonance, not just aesthetics."

In practice, that means the crew and the layout of the ship should work quietly in the background, so the focus stays on personal service and the people on board. The real luxury, he argues, isn't the material itself but how the shared experience makes members feel. Empathy and intuition from the team matter more than any finish or fixture.

Authenticity has to run deeper than the logo

By the time Beyond Horizons sets sail, Glauser Benz expects the lines between automotive, fashion, hospitality, residential, and experiential luxury to have largely disappeared. His message for anyone building a luxury product today: think in terms of an ecosystem, not a single product.

But he's clear that brand extension only works when the connection is real. "You cannot simply put a prestigious heritage logo on a completely different product category and call it luxury," he says. "The alignment must be absolute."

For Maybach, that alignment traces back to the 1920s, when the company was building engines for maritime propulsion. That history gives a futuristic concept a genuine anchor. The broader lesson for hotel brands, he says, is to ask how they can move from a transactional product to something that serves guests across every part of their lives.

Christian Glauser Benz speaks on Luxury Without Limits: Extending the Brand Experience at the INSPIRE Luxury Hospitality Conference, Dec 15-16, 2026, at JW Marriott Orlando Bonnet Creek Resort & Spa, a Forbes Five-Star Resort in Orlando, Florida. Learn more at ilha.org/inspire.