Blog
The most expensive marina in the world?
Wednesday, 3rd October 2018As part of our expansion from Greece and Croatia to now offering bareboat and skippered yacht and catamaran charters from France, Italy and Montenegro, our team have been busy researching the cruising grounds right across the Med – with some interesting results.
Whilst the Greeks are fans of pricing low (Average: €35 a night) to encourage you to sail to their local port or marina (and ‘invest’ your money in their local bars and tavernas instead), in Croatia and Montenegro, the prices are set higher than you’d like (average: €70 a night) so that their serious multi-million or even billion-pound investments in developing marinas across each country can start to slowly pay off.
It’s quite a jump from the berthing fees we’re used to in Greece, but then, the Greeks haven’t been investing too heavily in marinas over recent years.
The average marina fee in Italy is €80 a night, but there are some super-desirable places (think Capri, Ischia and Amalfi) where they will charge you upwards of €150 for a single night in their marina – and that’s even for a smallish boat. But then, you are staying in seriously popular places, where the average hotel room would be upwards of €250 a night, so it makes sense that the prices for a berth right in the thick of things might reflect that.
But can you imagine how much it would cost you to spend the night in Monte Carlo to have prime seats for watching the Formula 1 racing cars whizz past the end of your boat, live from the comfort of your own yacht or catamaran cockpit, and within eye-sight of the pit-lane?
Well, berths are allocated by ballot, and for a minimum of the whole week, but a ‘zone 1’ berth for a yacht smaller than 19m will set you back over €10,500 – or €1,500 a night! If your eyes are already watering, you’re going to explode when you hear that it’s going to cost you €125,000 a week to moor up your 120m+ superyacht in the marina… But what a place to spend the night that would be!