Stacy Fischer-Rosenthal and her 30-strong team have had a busy summer booking private yachts for bankers, CEOs and other high flyers now liberated from the shackles of the COVID-19 pandemic and willing to pay millions of dollars for week-long luxury cruises.
Bookings for superyachts through Fischer Travel Enterprises, where Fischer-Rosenthal is president, have spiked 20 percent this year from already high levels last year, a trend also seen by other companies chartering out luxury vessels that can come with all the frills from Michelin-starred cuisine to cinemas and submarines.
“Yacht charters are very popular because our clients want the privacy, security and flexibility that it gives them,” Fischer-Rosenthal said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Her company charges US$150,000 just to join its members-only service, through which superyachts can be chartered anywhere around the world.
“They want to have a luxurious experience,” she said about her customers.
Americans are a growing client base, helping to fill gaps left by wealthy Russians who are not traveling as much due to restrictions following their country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Photo: Reuters
And it is not just the likes of Elon Musk or Beyonce and Jay-Z hiring out these glitzy floating palaces.
Fischer-Rosenthal said a couple from the US enjoyed their cruise in Greece and Turkey in July so much they booked another in Italy shortly after and invited friends along.
Fraser Yachts, which sells and manages superyachts, and arranges charters, booked nearly 500 private trips in the first half of this year, company director of marketing and business development Mark Duncan said.
Bookings are up 32 percent from last year, and again most of the growth is being driven by Americans, many of whom are renting for the first time, said Duncan, who is based in Monaco.
Among the megayachts the firm hires out is Wheels, a 75m vessel with a gym and nightclub.
The number of Americans with a net worth of US$1 million to US$5 million last year grew 8 percent to more than 12 million, while those worth US$25 million or more climbed 18 percent, according to research company Spectrem Group.
“Our clients are high-net worth individuals, running banks and hedge funds,” Fischer-Rosenthal said. “They’ve made a lot of money in the last few years. Now they want to travel again and they want the best.”
Customers are also getting younger, now averaging in their 50s rather than the 60-to-65 age bracket in the past two decades, Duncan said.
This year, about 35 percent of Fraser’s clients are new to yachting, compared with up to 15 percent previously, he said.
Cruises involving several generations from the same family are also more popular.
“During the pandemic, people couldn’t be with their families,” Duncan said. “Yachts can be big enough for all to be together. Unlike a home, you’re not stuck in one place. And you can control the environment and test everyone for COVID if that’s a concern.”
The trend of families and friends traveling together is spurring demand for bigger superyachts.
Monaco-based Camper & Nicholsons International Ltd is seeing highest demand in the 50m to 60m range, said Jacqui Lockhart, the firm’s Europe head of charter management.
“They often know exactly what they want — a big yacht that’s less than three years old,” Lockhart said, adding that the company’s overall bookings are up as much as 30 percent this year.
“They know the style of yacht they want, from which shipbuilder even,” she said.
One of the world’s most expensive superyachts, available for charter through Camper & Nicholsons, is the 126m Octopus, which counts among its features two helipads, an elevator and basketball court.
Previously owned by Microsoft Corp cofounder Paul Allen, the Octopus costs from US$2.2 million a week to rent. As many as 42 crew are on board to cater to a maximum of 12 guests.
It is booked for three weeks in Antarctica this winter, and Camper & Nicholsons said it is already fielding requests for month-long excursions next summer in the Mediterranean.
There are about 3,100 private yachts available for charter globally, Duncan said.
However, the number of superyachts has dipped as sanctions on Russia removed some from the market. One of those, the 72-meter Axioma, was owned by Russian billionaire Dmitry Pumpyansky and had been listed for charter for about US$632,000 a week in peak summer. It was seized at the start of the war in Ukraine and put up for sale at public auction last month.
There is also more scrutiny on private rentals.
“Clients are asking about the yachts and the ownership,” said Alexandru Zamfirescu, an independent yacht broker based in Monaco. “They want to steer away from any trouble.”
Still, business is good, and brokers are focused on getting clients onto boats, advising them to book within days of getting a quote. There is usually no negotiation with owners on prices.
“Luxury yachting is thriving,” Zamfirescu said.
This time was supposed to be different. The memorychip sector, famous for its boom-and-bust cycles, had changed its ways. A combination of more disciplined management and new markets for its products — including 5G technology and cloud services — would ensure that companies delivered more predictable earnings. Yet, less than a year after memory companies made such pronouncements, the US$160 billion industry is suffering one of its worst routs ever. There is a glut of the chips sitting in warehouses, customers are cutting orders and product prices have plunged. “The chip industry thought that suppliers were going to have better control,” said
Enimmune Corp (安特羅生技) has obtained marketing approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its EnVAX-A71 vaccine for enterovirus 71 (EV-71), becoming the nation’s first enterovirus vaccine completely made in Taiwan, it said yesterday. After spending 13 years and NT$1.5 billion (US$49.77 million) on the research and development of the vaccine, Enimmune plans to start manufacturing and marketing it by the end of March, the company said in a statement, without disclosing customer order figures. “It is possible that the vaccine would not be included in a national vaccination program initially, and consumers would need to pay for it themselves,” parent
Vaccine skeptics blocking transfusions for life-saving surgeries, Facebook groups inciting violence against doctors and a global search for unvaccinated donors — COVID-19 misinformation has bred a so-called “pure blood” movement. The movement spins anti-vaccine narratives focused on unfounded claims that receiving blood from people inoculated against COVID-19 “contaminates” the body. Some have advocated for blood banks that draw from “pure” unvaccinated people, while medics in North America say they have fielded requests from people demanding transfusions from donors who have not received a vaccine. In closed social media groups, vaccine skeptics — who brand themselves as “pure bloods” — promote violence against doctors
Asteroid mining start-up AstroForge Inc is planning to launch its first two missions to space this year as it seeks to extract and refine metals from deep space. The first launch, scheduled for April, is to test AstroForge’s technique for refining platinum from a sample of asteroid-like material. The second, planned for October, would scout for an asteroid near Earth to mine. The missions are part of AstroForge’s goal of refining platinum-group metals from asteroids, with the aim of bringing down the cost of mining these metals. It also hopes to reduce the massive amount of carbon emissions that stem from mining
RSS