A shift in time

Over the course of the past four decades, superyachting has experienced a dramatic transformation – not only has the superyacht fleet grown in dramatic fashion, to more than 6,000 yachts over 30 metres worldwide today, but also the profile of yachting and the expectations of owners have also transformed beyond all recognition. It’s something that Rupert Nelson – Senior Partner, Director, and Senior Broker at Burgess Monaco – has experienced first-hand.

He joined the superyacht industry in 1989 after six years in the British Royal Navy. After two and a half years with Peter Insull – who had moved from crewing to become the industry’s first crew agent in the 1970s, and who had moved into yacht brokerage in the 1980s – in 1991 Nelson joined the fledgling team at Burgess. “We were only eight persons in the company at that point,” he begins, “with an office in London and an office in Monaco – since then we’ve grown to a team of around 230 people in 14 offices around the world. I’ve been based in the South of France and in Monaco since the beginning and I feel that the proximity to this coast, which is arguably the most significant in the yachting market, has really helped.”

All that experience and all those interactions with clients, captains, and the industry, means Nelson is acutely aware of the subtle generational shifts and yachting trends that have evolved over the past three decades. “When I started we were dealing with the elder client, and now they are passing their business and that wealth onto their next generation,” he explains. “When I met them, their sons and daughters were babies but now those children are in their 20s with their degrees and MBAs and they are at the bottom tier of the company ladders, making their way up – and they are the future. And with them comes a whole different culture, and a whole different approach to yachting. We’ve had to adapt and be fluid, and hire young people who get millennials and Gen Z. You have to maintain a relationship with all generations of the family – walk into a room and shake one person’s hand because they’re the boss and ignore the rest at your peril.”

Those new generations not only present a key challenge to the future of superyachts, but also offer a key opportunity, Nelson thinks. “The fathers and grandfathers had a very different outlook to the new generations – they created their wealth in most cases, and they started with smaller yachts to reward their success and got bigger ones as their wealth grew,” he says. “But for the children, the yacht was just something the family used for a vacation.” The key, he says, is that the new generations focus on the experiential nature of travel, and in that context superyachts offer a unique platform for unique experiences all over the world.

It’s something that experiential travel specialists such as Cookson Adventures have also noticed, particularly since the world opened up after the travel lockdowns of COVID. “We do lots of multi-generational trips, but while those typically have been led by the older generation – father, grandfather, mother, or grandmother – I would say in the last couple of years [post pandemic] we’re seeing a much younger demographic come through who are a lot more curious, a lot more open and a lot more willing to try new things,” offers Neal Bateman, Head of Yachts at Cookson Adventures.

Moreover, those who come from generational wealth, he says, are typically more relaxed and notably more low-key, and are generally much more curious about the world. “They’ve grown up on yachts in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, and they want to do something different and have a different story to tell,” Bateman adds.

Further, says Tamsin Graham – Head of PR and Communications at Cookson Adventures – there’s a lot of wealth coming into experiential yachting from tech industries, which typically is a young industry with young entrepreneurs making money. “There are many clients coming through who have made money in the tech world and who now really want to travel and to experience things,” she emphasises, “and they are really up for doing something different and having different adventures, which has been really exciting.”

It doesn’t just speak to a change in superyacht clientele and their aims and ambitions, but also to the solid future that the superyacht industry has thanks to the drive to realise ever-more wonderful experiences. “It’s all about making that memory and taking it home,” Nelson concludes. “But then the yacht becomes a central part of accessing those experiences and making those memories, and I therefore think yachting is here to stay.”