ResidenSea did this, but it was priced at a point where only the super rich could afford it, and those people were so rich that they treated it as a part-time vacation residence.
I've looked at this (from even the mid-1990s), and it's really hard to make the economics work. Ships are expensive, both in capital costs and especially in operations costs. You can buy used ships, but they're never very efficient or suitable, and retrofitting them is expensive.
People who would be comfortable living out of a tiny cabin with limited services are almost always better off just renting a place on land for a period of time and flying in between destinations. It's only if you need a large, constant space that it makes sense, and doing that with a ship is expensive.
There's also a horrible scale problem -- you could maybe make this work on a per-user cost with a $10b world's largest ship, but a $100mm ship is probably 10x less efficient, and a $1mm boat is another 10-50x less efficient.
There's also the loss of freedom with a large ship. I'd rather just make enough to buy a $5-10mm boat of my own (or, ideally, $100-200mm), and have some guests sometimes, vs. try to coordinate when people get on or off or where it goes as a collective.
There's the regular cruise ship industry on the low end as competition, too. You can get deals and just book 90 days on cruise ships if you want, and get the scale advantages of a large ship; the downside is boredom and being around a bunch of old people (usually) or sometimes drunk college students. Block-booking (how most "gay cruises" or other special interests are done) works. Geekcruises did some of this.
What might make sense is a bunch of ships going on a specific route, with transferability across them, or big fixed platforms at sea where people can go to/from by air, boats, or bigger ships. Of course, now you're looking at many billions of dollars in capital and a very large minimum scale; it's really hard to be incremental in this market.
I've looked at this (from even the mid-1990s), and it's really hard to make the economics work. Ships are expensive, both in capital costs and especially in operations costs. You can buy used ships, but they're never very efficient or suitable, and retrofitting them is expensive.
People who would be comfortable living out of a tiny cabin with limited services are almost always better off just renting a place on land for a period of time and flying in between destinations. It's only if you need a large, constant space that it makes sense, and doing that with a ship is expensive.
There's also a horrible scale problem -- you could maybe make this work on a per-user cost with a $10b world's largest ship, but a $100mm ship is probably 10x less efficient, and a $1mm boat is another 10-50x less efficient.
There's also the loss of freedom with a large ship. I'd rather just make enough to buy a $5-10mm boat of my own (or, ideally, $100-200mm), and have some guests sometimes, vs. try to coordinate when people get on or off or where it goes as a collective.
There's the regular cruise ship industry on the low end as competition, too. You can get deals and just book 90 days on cruise ships if you want, and get the scale advantages of a large ship; the downside is boredom and being around a bunch of old people (usually) or sometimes drunk college students. Block-booking (how most "gay cruises" or other special interests are done) works. Geekcruises did some of this.
What might make sense is a bunch of ships going on a specific route, with transferability across them, or big fixed platforms at sea where people can go to/from by air, boats, or bigger ships. Of course, now you're looking at many billions of dollars in capital and a very large minimum scale; it's really hard to be incremental in this market.