Crafting an Italian Superyacht Epicenter

It is sometimes quipped that it may take one person to own a yacht, but it takes a disparate team of hundreds or even thousands to build it, from designers, engineers, welders and fabricators to brokers, surveyors, painters, cabinetmakers, crew and beyond. The story doesn’t stop when the yacht leaves the yard, however. It is arguably the operational phase of the yacht – the time it spends either cruising or, conversely, in port or in refit – where the biggest economic and employment impacts are derived.

The most obvious facet of this comes through guest, owner and crew spend which, as various reports attest, considerably outstrips anything that comes from the cruise ship industry. But there’s a far deeper level of impact, particularly when it comes to homeporting – essentially, where a yacht chooses as its home base, and where it and its crew may spend significant time, particularly in the off season. With that comes maintenance and upkeep, and the phalanx of services required to keep a yacht in tip-top condition.

It’s why several key locations have striven either to maintain – in the case of places like Palma in Mallorca, or Antibes on the Côte d’Azur – or establish themselves as core homeport options for yachts. A marina full of yachts means year-round business for towns that frequently would otherwise be seasonal, with local businesses otherwise reliant largely on tourists for their revenues.

The business case

Not only are towns and cities waking up to the potential that yachts offer, but more and more local and regional economic studies are putting quantifiable numbers on the positive benefits that superyachts bring. It’s why two key companies in the historically important maritime city of Genoa got together not only to create a local association of yacht-orientated businesses, but to work with the city itself to regenerate the city and turn it into a yachting hub and home port.

Yacht and ship agents Pesto Sea Group, founded in 1966, and refit and repair yard Amico & Co were two of the first companies in Genoa to recognise the opportunity that yachting offered back in the 1990s, when the industry was still in its fledgling stages. “In Genoa at that time the Coastguard didn’t know how to treat yachts – there were no rules or regulations for welcoming these boats into the port because Genoa was for big shipping, and yachting was a very new business and there were very few boats,” begins Marta Benvenuto of Pesto Sea Group. “Fabio Pesto, whose father had founded Pesto Sea Group, and Alberto Amico, who founded Amico & Co with his father, started the yachting sector in Genoa. As great friends, over the years they looked for ways to welcome crews, captains and yacht managers.”

A little over a decade ago they held The Italian Job for the first time, an event held over a weekend with a golf and a tennis tournament and other activities for the community of crews, managers and their families. “We wanted people to discover another part of the Italian Riviera that was not the usual Cinque Terra that everyone knows,” Benevnuto explains. “More than 350 people attended the first one, and it grew from there. From that point on we also decided we wanted to do something more organic that could push Genoa as a hub for yachting, and that would show crews that Genoa was not a big industrial city but a beautiful destination where you could do a refit or home port for the winter.”

Positive impacts

What was clear for Amico & Co and Pesto Sea Group, along with the other businesses in the Genoa yachting cluster, was that the benefits of attracting yachts would be felt far beyond the dedicated companies servicing them – and it also tied in perfectly with the city’s waterfront regeneration programme.

“The area where we are in the city is very well known because of the Genoa boat show, and it’s an area that had become a little bit run down over many years,” says Valentina Peri, who represents Genoa’s new Waterfront Marina that opened in 2021. “But that is all changing thanks to a number of key initiatives being driven by the city and by local businesses, with the upgrading of the city and the addition of new developments such as architect Renzo Piano’s Waterfront di Levante. These are important elements, because the benefits of yachting are being seen alongside and as part of these wider regeneration projects for Genoa.

“We worked together with the mayor and the city with the Genoa Superyacht Hub elements because they noted the investments our companies made to give the area a higher value,” she continues, “so they perfectly understand that value because they are finally starting to understand how much the yacht industry can bring to the city. Genoa was well-known for its maritime industry because of the cruise and cargo ships, but nobody considered Genoa as a home port for yachts – it’s really only in the last few years that they have started to consider how important yachting is.”

A different view

It is, Benvenuto emphasises, a change in mindset from both the municipal government and from the businesses in town. “They’re starting to get the importance of the yacht segment for this city, for the people living and working here in general and not only the ones working specifically in the yacht industry,” she says. “For sure yachting is increasingly known, but we did a lot of work with the city and local government institutions to let them know exactly how many people in the city work for the industry.”

Indeed, Amico & Co and Pesto Sea Group founded a local association for businesses who can show they derive the majority of their income from the yachting industry. To date there are almost 60 companies who are members of the Genova for Yachting association. The contribution of yachting to the city was further reinforced with the publication of the study by The European – House Ambrosetti, which considered ‘The socio-economic impact of professional yachting in Genoa’ and released its findings in 2020. Those findings showed that yachts in 2020 alone brought a cumulative €354 million to the city, as well as highlighting that the equivalent employment generated stood at 2,100 jobs.

“We’ve also held local forums and meetings to show the local people that it’s not just 10 rich people we work with but rather the whole industry,” Benvenuto continues, “and we could show what this means for all the businesses in town for everything from grocery shops to hotels because the crews live in town for several months. It’s a mindset change and it just takes time,” she concludes, “but I believe that now they look at it the right way. They’re starting to get the importance of the superyacht segment for the city in general and for all the people living and working in the city.” It’s an awakening that is starting to happen wherever superyachts head, because they offer so much potential for business and employment even, or perhaps especially, when they have left the shipyard.