Greece third in superyacht ownership league

Two recent reports by Bloomberg and Knight Frank indicate that Greece is third in the league of global superyacht ownership for vessels over 40m (131ft) in length. Greece is also the fourth most popular destination for such sized yachts to visit.

While these facts are not generally appreciated, it is not surprising given the confidentially that surrounds superyacht ownership. Greece is known to be the world’s largest ship-owning nation and its long maritime heritage is also well recorded.

The two reports reflect on the considerable growth that Greek superyacht ownership has taken in recent years to reach the position it is now. Alongside ownership and increased visitation patterns, there is also greater use of support services such as brokers, agents and shipyards for refit and repair work.

The ownership of large yachts is an established part of the history of Greek ship owners. Several yachts have also been built in Greece: for example, the Atlantis I and Atlantis II, constructed in the early 1970s at the Skaramanga Shipyard when it was owned by Stavros Niarchos, as well as the 85m (279ft) O’Ptasia, which was built in Perama earlier this year for Greek-owned Golden Yachts.

As one of the world’s largest private wealth management businesses, Knight Frank, in its 2018 Wealth Report, included a section on superyacht ownership by nationality and size. This part of the report looked at yachts over 40m and, making use of data from SuperYacht iQ, showed that there are some 4,795 leisure craft that can be described as superyachts in the world right now.

In Greece there are 107 such yachts in ownership in the country, which ranks it well behind the US with 407 and Russia with 168. After Greece comes the UK with 96, and Saudi Arabia with 54.

The report shows that the average length of Greek-owned yachts is 50m (164ft) compared with 59m (194ft) for Russia and 52m (171ft) for the US.

The Bloomberg report highlights that Greece was the fourth most popular location to visit for superyachts. Using AIS data, the report shows that around 100 superyachts were in Greek waters during the summer months. This compared with 200 in Italy, 147 in France, and 143 in the US. After Greece the order was Spain, Croatia and Monaco.