The news that Jeff Bezos bought a “superyacht” has rekindled interest in the hermetic world of wealthy globetrotters who enjoy this ultimate status symbol.
According to experts, the The superyacht industry has been booming for years, even during the global economic slowdown caused by the pandemic.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the world’s richest man, has seen his personal wealth practically doubled from 2017 , thanks to the enormous volume of income obtained in 2020, when more people than ever turned to online shopping.
But Bezos is not the only one who has become even richer. Many of the wealthiest people in the world have seen their fortunes grow in recent years.
And shipyards have followed building megayachts : getting bigger and bigger as gain popularity .
According to experts and brokers, in 2020 more yachts were sold than ever, and in 2021 sales will break records again .
What do we know about Bezos’s yacht?
The ship of 127 meters is being manufactured in the Netherlands by Oceanco, according to the biography of Bezos published by the specialist medium Bloomberg at the beginning of May.
Estimated to cost around US $ 549 million , a drop in the ocean for the richest man in the world, whose wealth at one point grew by US $ 13. 000 million in a single day in 2020.
His estimated net worth is now almost US $ 200. 000 million.
That price does not include the smaller motorized “support yacht” that Bezos also plans to buy.
This ship includes a helipad. Bezos’s girlfriend, TV host Lauren Sánchez, is trained as a helicopter pilot.
The main yacht cannot include its own helipad due to the three masts of navigation on her deck.
The smaller yacht is also expected to be able to carry other things, such as cars, luxury speedboats and probably even a submarine, according to an article by Forbes released this week.
The superyacht project, surrounded in secrecy and known as Y 675, will be finalized sometime in June, according to Bloomberg .
Bezos likely placed the order several years ago, as custom-made boats such as this may tar take around 5 years to build.
Oceanco, the Dutch yacht manufacturer, has not made any statements about the project.
They previously built the Black Pearl, from 106, 7 meters, the second largest sailing yacht in the world.
What is a superyacht?
There is no official definition of a superyacht (compared to a normal yacht), but in the industry the term generally refers to a yacht of more from 22 meters long.
Some question that definition, saying that the term “superyacht” applies to boats of more than 60 meters long.
Others brokers have even adopted the term “gigaya te ” to refer to boats of more than d e 91 meters .
“It’s all a bit of marketing,” says Bill Springer, who writes about the yachting industry for Forbes magazine .
Bezos’s yacht, which measures more than 108 meters , it is almost as big as the great pyramid of Giza (if the ship be placed vertically). It is just under half the length of the Eiffel Tower.
Only a few giant superyachts like Bezos’s ship are built each year, but high-profile projects are often carried out with such secrecy that builders must sign confidentiality agreements.
Therefore, it is unlikely that we will ever know if Bezos copied the decorative styles of the Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko, who decided to cover the wall of a cabin with Stingray skins.
A booming industry
The industry has grown rapidly over the last 20 years.
According to the National Association of Marine Manufacturers of EE .US., In 2021 boat sales peaked at 13 years, reflecting how People have turned to water to perform safe activities and with social distance during confinements due to the pandemic.
“The market has been boiling,” says Sam Tucker, head of superyacht research at market intelligence firm VesselsValue. “There have been a record number of transactions made and that trend continues even now.”
The second-hand yacht market “has also been crazy,” says Tucker. “It’s red hot.”
According to Tucker, there are 9. 357 yachts over 19 meters long that are currently at sea, that is, they have not sunk or are not staying on land either.
Approximately on 85% of them are motorized and the 15% are sailing yachts like the one Bezos has commissioned.
On 2020 fewer yachts were chartered, d ice Tucker, who attributes it to travel restrictions during the pandemic.
Sales fell for a few weeks when the US was hit by lockdowns in 2020, but then fired immediately.
In June, “it was like someone flipped a switch.” Orders started pouring in quickly, says Bob Denison, who has been a yacht broker in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, since 2001.
“There has been nothing like it before” , He says. “The demand is two or three times greater than what I have seen.”
Denison’s company sold 1. 008 boats in 2020, a increase of 35% over the previous year .
Currently on track to register another increase of 30% on 2021.
Approximately 65 Boats sold in 2020 were superyachts. So far this year, some 40 superyachts, which means that your The company has sold about 2.2 superyachts per week since January.
Demand has totally outstripped supply, says colleague Ben Farnborough, who adds that it is now much more difficult to find second-hand boats to sell.
Farnborough hopes that easing travel restrictions due to the coronavirus will soon allow travel to Europe to obtain more yachts from Second hand to sell in the USA
Who buys superyachts?
Boats often are bought by corporations and then rented by the company owner, making it difficult to establish with certainty which yachts are owned by whom.
In famous construction ports of Boats, like the one in the Netherlands where Oceanco is located, fans try to d Detect private jet license plates in an effort to determine which billionaires have come to visit your future yacht.
Privacy is the goal of owning a yacht, highlights Tucker, who considers the sector a “opaque industry”.
Tech industry billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are rumored to own yachts.
“These are highly secretive assets and one of the reasons why they are bought is for privacy ”, says Tucker.
Privacy also offers security, a not so insignificant consideration for the richest people in the world.
And can That the ultra-rich want to keep their new toys in ultra-privacy today.
When Hollywood billionaire David Geffen posted on Instagram a photo of his yacht saying that he was “isolated” in a tropical paradise and that he hoped everyone were “safe” during the pandemic, the rest of mortals quickly criticized him.
“Has David Geffen just insulted everyone?”, commented a user in reaction to the not so Geffen’s humble boast.
Why are they so expensive?
Yachts offer “true exclusivity,” says Springer, who compares owning one to owning a private island or building a custom city from scratch.
“In the Renaissance, wealthy patrons paid the equivalent to millions of dollars to build cathedrals “, he points out.
” And they were the most beautiful and they had the best craftsmen, and they were the most spectacular projects of their time. And there was a lot of ‘hey, I’m very rich and I’m going to do these really incredible things with my money.’ ”
“ So the superyachts are very similar in that sense ”, he adds.
They are also becoming more comfortable and reaching places beyond the “ classic ports of glamor ”like Monaco, says Springer.
People now take them to more exotic and remote places, like Antarctica and Papua New Guinea , as the owners discover that they are more than simple status symbols.
The best superyachts are tailor-made, with craftsmen who design every detail for the tastes of the richest and most elite of the world. world.
They can take years to build. A yacht as large as Bezos’s probably involved some 400 workers and designers, estimates Farnborough. When it’s finished, you will probably need some 60 people to man it.
Annual operating costs amount to approximately 10% of purchase price, says Tucker of VesselsValue.
High oil prices and the possibility of more lockdowns could lead to more second-hand yachts hitting the market during 2022, estimates.
What other things cost as much as a superyacht?
Bezos bought the newspaper The Washington Post at 2001 for only US $ 250 million, about half the cost of his new superyacht.
A painting by the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was auctioned in New York for US $ 93 millions. There is also a Claude Monet painting for about US $ 350 million.
Virgin Galactic has been selling tickets to space for between US $ 250. and US $ 250. 000 in recent years while preparing for his first commercial launch.
But if you’re Jeff Bezos, you don’t need to book a ticket: he, behind the space company Blue Origin, could fly on his own spacecraft.
Remember that you can receive notifications from BBC News Mundo. Download our app and activate them so as not to miss our best content.