RUSSIA: Yachts are booming business in landlocked Moscow

Record ID: 661524

  • Title: RUSSIA: Yachts are booming business in landlocked Moscow
  • Date: 19th June 2006
  • Summary: WOMEN IN NAUTICAL COSTUME WORKING AT YACHT SHOW
  • Embargoed: 4th July 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Lifestyle,Transport
  • Reuters ID: LVA4OFU9IC9IFEEJQCNORCZRSLZU
  • Story Text: Moscow is nowhere near the ocean and its rivers are frozen most of the year. Yet Russia's superrich are snapping up yachts from around the world to cruise on the capital's waterways, making the city a yacht capital. At a four-day yacht festival this week on the banks of the Moscow River, more than twenty international boat sellers promoted their latest models.
    Although Russia has no yachting tradition and a lot of Russians live barely above the poverty line, yacht sellers say the demand for luxurious boats has been booming in the few years as the country recovers from a financial meltdown in the late 90s. Their main customers are Moscow's growing legion of millionaires, always on the look out for new status symbols.
    "Every person who is buying a house on the water immediately wants a boat and they go for premium quality. They don't even want to try what boat they want, they immediately ask what is the best one. And we are lucky with this because our boats are the most expensive, and the best and the most luxurious," said Svetlana Vasilyeva, General Director of Premium Boat Service (PBS), a Dutch company that imports American motor yachts.
    In business for just two years, PBS says it sells one to three yachts per week, ranging from 7 to 11 metres long and costing between two and five hundred thousand U.S. dollars per piece. However, sellers are realizing that there is even more money to be made with bigger boats.
    "Only five years ago the biggest boat in Moscow area was 39 feet, which is 12 metres. At the moment the biggest boat is 30 metres. Price wise the difference is 15 times. So, if you talk about the business, we got in quite occasionally, but now it is our passion," said Georgy Chumburidze, who -- at 25-years-old -- is the owner and director of Ultra Marine, a company that sells big Italian yachts of the brand Azimut. Chumburidze said he sells some 40 to 50 yachts per year.
    Without a sea nearby, Moscow's yacht owners mainly use their yachts to cruise on the rivers and lakes around the capital.
    "In principle it is quite comfortable for an hour boat trip, and after that you can always dock at a cozy picturesque restaurant in a harbour and relax. But if you want to have some waves, this size of the boat also allows you to put it on a big trailer and drive it to Krasnodar (area on the Black Sea) or to the coast by Saint Petersburg, without a problem," said Dmitry Bukhotoyarov, a chairman of a bank who bought his powerful Cobalt 343 at the end of last year's yachting season.
    As thousands of Moscovites watched from the river banks and bridges, proud yacht-owners happily showed off their new toys and cruised towards the Kremlin.
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