The news that Jeff Bezos bought a "superyacht" has renewed interest in the secret world of uber-rich world travelers who enjoy such ultimate status symbols.
Experts say the superyacht industry has been growing for years, even during the global economic slowdown caused by the pandemic.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and officially the richest man in the world, has seen his personal wealth roughly double since 2017, helped by a boost to his wallet last year, when more people than ever turned to online shopping.
And it's not just Bezos.
Many of the richest people in the world have increased their wealth in recent years.
And through it all, shipyards have continued to churn out mega yachts that experts say are only getting bigger with popularity.
According to experts and sales agents, more yachts were sold in 2020 than ever before, and 2021 is expected to break all sales records again.
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What do we know about Bezos' yacht?
The 127-meter-long vessel is being built by the Okeanko company in the Netherlands, according to Bezos' new biography Bloomberg News.
It is estimated to cost about 500 million dollars, which is just a drop in the ocean for the richest man in the world, whose wealth at one point jumped by 13 billion dollars in just one day 2020. years.
His net worth is now estimated to be nearly $200 billion.
That price does not include a smaller motorized "support yacht" that Bezos also plans to buy.
There is a helipad on the smaller yacht - Bezos' girlfriend, television presenter Lauren Sanchez, is a trained helicopter pilot.
The main yacht cannot have its own helipad due to the three cruising masts on deck.
The smaller yacht is expected to be equipped with other goodies, such as cars, luxury speedboats, and possibly even a submarine, experts say.
The top-secret superyacht project, known as the Y721, should be completed next month, according to Bloomberg.
It is very likely that Bezos ordered it a few years ago, since custom ships like this one take five years to build.
Okeanko, the Dutch yacht builder, did not comment on the project.
They previously built the 100-meter Black Pearl, the second largest cruising yacht in the world.
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What is a superyacht?
There is no official definition of a superyacht (compared to an ordinary one), but in the industry the term usually refers to a yacht over twenty-two meters in length.
Some dispute that definition, arguing that the term superyacht refers to vessels longer than 60 meters.
Some sales agents even use the term "gigayacht" to describe vessels longer than 100 meters.
"It's a bit of a marketing thing," says Bill Springer, who writes about the yachting industry for Forbes magazine.
Bezos' yacht, which is more than 120 meters long, is almost as long as the Great Pyramid of Giza (if the boat were upright).
It is only slightly less than half the length of the Eiffel Tower.
Only a handful of superyachts like Bezos' boat are completed each year, but these high-profile projects are often done in such secrecy that builders are required to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
So we'll probably never know whether Bezos copied the decorative details of Russian oligarch and fellow yachtsman Andrei Melnichenko, who lined the spiral staircase on one of his yachts. silver embossed walls.
How is the yachting industry doing?
The industry has experienced rapid growth over the past 20 years.
According to the US National Marine Manufacturers Association, boat sales hit a thirteen-year high in 2020, reflecting how people are turning to the water for safe, physically distanced activities during the lockdown.
"There is an absolute frenzy in the market," says Sam Tucker, head of superyacht research at research firm Vesselswell.
"A record number of transactions were completed, and that trend has continued until today."
The used yacht market is also "absolutely insane," he says.
"The market is completely heated."
According to Tucker, there are 9,357 yachts over twenty meters currently at sea - that is, those that have not been sunk or are being maintained on land.
About 85 percent of those are motorized, and 15 percent are cruising yachts like the one ordered by Bezos.
Fewer yachts were chartered in 2020, Tucker says, which he attributes to pandemic travel restrictions that prevented normal tourist activity.
Sales dipped for a few weeks after the US lockdown was imposed, but skyrocketed immediately afterwards.
In June, "it was like someone flipped a switch," as orders began pouring in rapidly, says Bob Denison, a yacht sales agent in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., since 2001.
"Nothing like this has ever been seen before," he says.
"The demand is two or three times higher than anything I've ever experienced."
Denison's company sold 2020 boats in 1.008 - which is a jump of 35 percent compared to the previous year.
It is currently on track to experience another 30 percent increase in 2021.
About 65 of those he sold in 2020 were superyachts.
Forty superyachts have been sold so far this year, meaning his company has sold 2,2 superyachts per week since January.
Demand has completely outstripped supply, says his colleague Ben Farnborough.
He adds that it is now much more difficult for them to find used boats for sale.
Farnborough hopes the easing of travel restrictions due to the coronavirus will soon allow trips to Europe to bring in more used yachts for sale in the US.
Who buys a superyacht?
Vessels are often bought by corporations and then chartered by the company owner, which makes it difficult to accurately discover which yachts are owned by whom.
In famous harbors with shipyards, such as the one in the Netherlands where Okeanko is located, hobbyists try to read the numbers on the tails of private jets to try to discover which billionaires have come to visit their future yachts.
Privacy is the whole point of owning a yacht, says Tucker, who calls it an "opaque industry."
Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, fellow tech billionaires, are also rumored to own yachts.
"It's a very private property, and one of the reasons they're bought is for privacy," says Tucker.
Privacy also offers good security protection, which is not an unimportant matter for the richest people in the world.
But despite the rise in popularity of yachts, the ultra-rich may want to keep their latest toys even more secret than before.
After Hollywood billionaire David Geffen posted that he was "isolating" on his yacht in a tropical paradise and hoped everyone else was "safe" during the pandemic, he was quickly trolled by those who remained on land.
"Did David Geffen just give us the middle finger?" wrote one Instagram user in reaction to Geffen's not-so-modest swagger.
Why are they so expensive?
Yachts offer "true exclusivity," says Springer, who compares them to owning a private island or building a personalized city from the ground up.
"During the Renaissance, wealthy patrons would pay - in today's money - millions of dollars to build cathedrals," he says.
"And they were beautiful, they had the best craftsmen, they were the most spectacular projects of that time.
"And their attitude was, 'Hey, I'm very rich and I'm going to do all these amazing things with my money.'"
"Yachts are very similar in that respect."
And they're getting more comfortable, and they're being sailed further than "classic glamorous ports" like Monaco, says Ringer.
People are now driving them to more exotic and remote places, such as Antarctica and Papua New Guinea, as their owners discover that they are more than just status symbols.
The best superyachts are made to order, while the best craftsmen in the world pay attention to every detail to satisfy the tastes of the world's rich and elite.
Sometimes it takes years and years to build.
A yacht as big as Bezos's required about 400 workers and designers, according to Farnborough.
When completed, it will require a crew of sixty to operate.
Annual operating costs are about 10 percent of the purchase price, says Tucker from Vessels Value.
The high price of oil and the possibility of new locks could lead to more used yachts being found on the market in the years to come, he estimates.
What else costs like a superyacht?
Bezos bought the Washington Post newspaper in 2013 for about $250 million — about half the price of his new yacht.
The painting of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat is currently at an auction in New York for a lower estimated sum of $145 million.
A painting by Claude Monet is also selling, for around $350 million.
In recent years, Virgin Galactic has been selling advance tickets for space travel for between $200.000 and $250.000 in preparation for its first commercial launch.
But if you're Jeff Bezos, you don't need to book a ticket.
Bezos, who is behind his space company Blue Origin, will be able to ride in his own rocket.
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