Why the world’s superyachts are getting bigger and bigger

Busi­ness is boom­ing in the lux­u­ry world of supery­achts, with the super-rich want­i­ng ever big­ger float­ing palaces.

Pao­la Tri­firò knows a thing or two about supery­achts – she and her hus­band have owned more than a dozen over the years.

The Ital­ian cou­ple, who have made their for­tune in law, and con­tin­ue to run a glob­al legal firm, like to sail around the world in the height of lux­u­ry.

Ms Tri­firò describes their boats, which can be more than 50m (164ft) long, as being like float­ing five-star hotels. And she likes to get involved in the design process.

One cri­te­ri­on she insists upon is that the crew have ample kitchen space, so they can cook gourmet meals for up to 15 peo­ple.

Ms Tri­firò explains her rea­son­ing: “If you are used to eat­ing well, not every­where [in the world] are there restau­rants good enough.”

She also says that the large size of the ves­sels is reas­sur­ing. “Whether it’s sail­ing along­side hump­back whales, or receiv­ing greet­ings by fish­er­men on the Fiji islands, my boats allow me to sail… with strength and safe­ty.”

But what exact­ly is a supery­acht? While there is no offi­cial glob­al clas­si­fi­ca­tion, indus­try web­site and mag­a­zine Boat Inter­na­tion­al describes one as “a lux­u­ry, pri­vate­ly-owned yacht that mea­sures 24 metres or more in length, and is pro­fes­sion­al­ly crewed”.

The mag­a­zine says that glob­al sales boomed after Covid. With the super rich sud­den­ly unable to go to lux­u­ry hotels, as they were all closed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, many switched to supery­achts instead.

As a result, 1,024 new supery­achts were built or on order around the world in 2022, a 25% jump from 2021, and a then all-time high, accord­ing to Boat Inter­na­tion­al’s fig­ures. This then increased to 1,203 in 2023, anoth­er new record.

“After the pan­dem­ic peo­ple con­sid­ered their super yachts as safe islands both for them­selves and their rel­a­tives,” says Bar­bara Arme­rio who co-owns Ital­ian fam­i­ly-run supery­acht builder Amer.

She adds that bil­lion­aires cher­ished their per­son­al space and inde­pen­dence even more. “They asked for big­ger win­dows, more space out­side, and to be able to touch the sea­wa­ter more eas­i­ly”.

While the over­all num­ber of supery­achts being built or ordered is expect­ed to fall slight­ly this year to 1,138, they are get­ting big­ger on aver­age, Boat Inter­na­tion­al’s data also shows. So far this year, 61 boats of 76m or more in length are being made, up from 55 in 2024.

And in the 46m to 60m group­ing, num­bers have increased to 175 from 159. Mean­while, sales of the small­est supery­achts, between 24m and 27m are down to 286 from 321.

“It’s clear that some of those new clients the indus­try found in the Covid-19 years are trad­ing up,” says Ms Arme­rio.

Boat Inter­na­tion­al’s edi­tor in chief Stew­art Camp­bell says that what­ev­er size supery­acht peo­ple buy “design­ers and naval archi­tects are get­ting very clever at pack­ing ever more vol­ume into hulls, giv­ing own­ers lots more space on board”.

As a result, today’s supery­acht’s increas­ing­ly have every­thing from heli­pads to cin­e­mas, gyms, beau­ty salons, and saunas.

As you’d imag­ine, prices are extreme­ly high. You can pay €36m ($41m; £30m) for a new small­er boat, up to €295m for a 105m-long ves­sel with all the option­al extras.

Half of all supery­achts con­tin­ue to be built in Italy, with its yards cur­rent­ly work­ing on a com­bined length of 22,195m, or approx­i­mate­ly 22km (13 miles), of boats. Turkey is in sec­ond place, fol­lowed by the Nether­lands, the UK, Tai­wan, Ger­many, the US and Chi­na.

Back in 2023, Ital­ian ship­builders earned €8.3bn from mak­ing supery­achts, a record high.

Ms Arme­rio says her ship­yard “pro­duces only a few high-grade” supery­achts per year, “mas­ter­pieces with unique details”.

She adds that Ital­ian yacht-mak­ers like hers are sup­port­ed by a sol­id net­work of local arti­sans. “In Italy we find every­thing we need.”

Ms Arme­rio points to being able to dri­ve to Tus­cany’s stone quar­ries from her com­pa­ny’s base on the coast of Lig­uria if she needs to order mar­ble.

Regard­ing the bil­lion­aires and mul­ti­mil­lion­aires who buy supery­achts, Boat Inter­na­tion­al says that most are from the US. Yet it points to more com­ing from Turkey, Indone­sia and Mex­i­co as those coun­tries’ economies grow.

Mean­while, sales to Russ­ian buy­ers have fall­en to due to the sanc­tions against the coun­try and its elites as a result of Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of Ukraine.

If the appeal of a supery­acht was­n’t imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous, Ms Tri­firò says they enable her to see the world and ful­fil her wan­der­lust. And she likes to be at the con­trols of the boat.

“My curios­i­ty to explore new places push­es me to cruise the oceans while in the dri­ver’s seat,” she says.

Ms Tri­firò adds that her crew is paid dou­ble what they’d like­ly earn on land “as it is very impor­tant to keep them hap­py. Our cap­tain has worked for us for 22 years.”