Silversea Cruises has opened The Cormorant at 55 South, a 150-room hotel in Puerto Williams, Chile — the southernmost city on Earth — giving the expedition cruise brand a land-based anchor for its Antarctica Fly Cruise program and a showcase for regional Chilean food and beverage culture. The November 5 ribbon-cutting, attended by Silversea executive leadership and Chilean national and regional authorities, marks the first hotel venture for Silversea and its parent, Royal Caribbean Group.
Food & Beverage at the Edge
The hotel's culinary program is built entirely around the far south of Chile. The flagship restaurant, Latitude 55, centers on regional ingredients from Chilean Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, and the waters surrounding Puerto Williams, with dinner served family-style on large shared platters rooted in the asado tradition. Bar Sur, the hotel's social hub, pours Chilean wines spanning the country's full viticultural range from north to south, anchors its cocktail list in calafate — a tart native indigo berry — and Chilean Pisco, and offers guided Pisco journeys and sommelier-led wine tastings. The program is designed to immerse arriving and departing guests in destination flavors before or after they board an expedition ship.
"We opened The Cormorant at 55 South to make the journey to Antarctica easier and more comfortable for our guests," said Bert Hernandez, president of Silversea. "Now the expedition begins here, in a hotel designed around Puerto Williams, with the same service our guests expect while on board our ships."
Design Rooted in Place
The property was constructed using modular techniques: each of the 150 rooms was built in Mendoza, Argentina, then transported across the Andes and Patagonia to its final location at 55 degrees south latitude. Interiors draw on local materials, regional craft traditions, and three large-scale works by Chilean artists — including a steel sculpture suspended in the main lobby, a bar mural, and an installation of seventy handcrafted ceramic stones — creating a sense of arrival in the destination before guests reach open water. A Fireplace lounge, designed around the regional tradition of communal fire as a gathering and storytelling space, overlooks the Patagonian landscape through floor-to-ceiling windows.
Season Scope and Operator Implications
Through March 2027, three Silversea ships — Silver Endeavour, Silver Wind, and Silver Cloud — will operate 40 voyages, 29 of which are Antarctica Fly Cruise itineraries that include a stay at The Cormorant. Itinerary lengths range from six to 21 nights and extend to South Georgia and the Falkland Islands. Every Fly Cruise guest arrives in Puerto Williams on a Silversea-branded charter flight from the brand's private terminal in Santiago.
For hospitality operators tracking luxury expedition travel, the Cormorant model — a branded shore-side property that extends a cruise line's service culture and F&B identity onto land — represents a broader integration strategy worth watching in the expedition and adventure hospitality segment. The locally driven culinary approach, with menus built from what grows, grazes, and swims in the immediate region, also reflects the place-based food and beverage programming that high-end travelers increasingly expect as a baseline, not a differentiator. Developed in partnership with a consortium of Chilean investors, the property was built to the service standards Silversea calls The Silversea Way, with hotel staff trained through the same culture framework as shipboard crews.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
