• Los Angeles Times, Monday, January 11, 2010 10:38 AM

Talk about a captive, high-end target market. About half of the cabins on the Utopia, a $1.1-billion cruise ship set to launch in 2013, will be offered as permanent residences ranging from about $3.7 million to $26 million, Hugo Martin reports.

The ship plans to be moored in all the best neighborhoods at all the right times -- Cannes during the film festival; Rio de Janeiro during carnival; Sydney Harbor on New Year's Eve; Monaco during the Grand Prix auto race. The keel has not been laid yet and some wonder if, given the economy, the time is right for such a gilded venture.

Of course it is; there will always be the super-rich, points out BuyCruises.com's Jill Wlos. "In this economy, there are still a lot of people with a lot of money that they don't know what to do with," she says. "It wouldn't be too hard to find 200 people with that kind of money."

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