Roger Horner, founder of the yacht electronics company e³, began to notice an unfamiliar trend in the superyacht market this past winter after a heady decade of expansion: customers were calling his Mallorca headquarters to see whether they could cancel or cut back their orders.
If the radar was broken, it had to be fixed. But owners suddenly decided they did not need that fancy new audiovisual entertainment system for their superyacht. “The luxuries are being postponed or cut,” says Horner.
Less than a year ago, Russian and Gulf billionaires were paying the full asking price for their new superyachts and the fittings. Shipyards had more business than they could handle and the supply of luxury vessels fell woefully short of global demand from ebullient oil magnates, entrepreneurs and hedge fund managers.