YACHT BUYERS ARE GETTING YOUNGER, SAYS AZIMUT/BENETTI EXEC

In the rarefied world of luxury yacht construction and design, the Viareggio, Italy-based Azimut/Benetti Group ranks high on the list of storied and sought-after names. The company’s clients include multi-millionaires and billionaires globally, and boldfacers such as Bill Gates have chartered its watercrated.

The company comprises two brands: Azimut, which produces smaller yachts that range in length from 10 to 35 meters, and Benetti, a mega- and superyacht producer behind ships from 37 to more than 100 meters long. It’s known for its technological innovations, including the extensive use of carbon fiber as well as hybrid diesel-electric vessels. Prices for the yachts between both brands range from US$1 million to more than US$300 million. Azimut/Benetti has four shipyards, three in Italy and one in Brazil, with the largest in Livorno, in Italy’s Tuscany region.

Paolo Vitelli founded Azimut in 1969 and acquired Benetti in 1985 to form Azimut/Benetti Group. His daughter, Giovanna Vitelli, 48, leads the family-run enterprise today. She spoke with Penta recently about how demand for yachts has increased as of late, its changing customer base, and the amenities on ships that owners most want today.

Penta: Has the demand for your yachts changed over the last few years?

Giovanna Vitelli: Despite initial predictions, the pandemic significantly boosted the yacht industry due to unforeseen mobility restrictions. The desire for freedom led to a surge in demand, and immediately after the COVID-19 lockdowns, every available boat, regardless of size, was sold out. Today, the demand has normalized, but the perception of what a yacht can offer has changed. As a result, our orders stretch to 2028.

Who are your primary customers, and how have they evolved over time?

Owners are now trending 10 years younger than before; they are typically men in their 50s. They are still very wealthy and successful, but unlike the past, where yacht ownership may have primarily symbolized opulence, today’s owner seeks something deeper: a private space to share with family and friends, a floating home with all the personal comforts, to enjoy a closer connection with the sea.

Can you share the amenities your customers want most on their yachts and how they differ from the past?

We are seeing a growing shift toward a more relaxed lifestyle on board. Owners seek areas ideal for sharing with loved ones. They have a preference for longer stays at anchor and want amenities that provide a comfortable, at-home experience. Popular requests include large social bars, extensive wine cellars, full office spaces for remote work, spa facilities, larger storage for water toys, and gym areas. These features blend luxury with functionality.

What are some of the unusual amenities or other requests your customers have requested?

We’ve added unique features such as a wood-burning pizza oven and a flower refrigerator. We even recreated a copy of the Sistine Chapel fresco over the dining table on a Benetti yacht. Another had spectacular interiors made with Lalique glass.

Tell us about the design features of your yachts. What aesthetic do you favor?

Twenty years ago, we began seeking designers from the luxury residential, hospitality, and fashion sectors rather than just the yachting industry. This brought a contemporary twist to a traditionally conservative sector. Each designer infuses the yacht with its own soul, but all have a simple elegance. Our most recent collaboration was with Matteo Thun and Antonio Rodriguez, inventors of eco-resorts, with whom we explored new frontiers for eco-friendly materials on Azimut’s Seadeck motoryachts .

One design concept that has influenced the lifestyle on board is the Benetti Oasis Deck. Previously, the stern was high and closed, but now, a lowered stern opens to the sea, enhancing the onboard experience.

How does sustainability figure into your designs?

Sustainability has been a core principle for us for over 20 years, and we started investing early on in technology to reduce fuel consumption. This philosophy continues to drive our innovations. Today, almost our entire fleet offers hybrid technology.

The newly launched Azimut Seadeck 6 became the most efficient and sustainable yacht ever produced by our group. In fact, the Azimut Seadeck Series can reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by as much as 40% in one year of average use compared to traditional yachts of similar size.

Our next goal is to further optimize consumption and emissions from onboard systems, especially for larger boats that spend around 90% of their time at anchor.

Also, our company has an agreement with the energy company Eni to use HVOlution, a biofuel made entirely from renewable raw materials.

Can you explain the concept of shadow yachts and tell us if they’re becoming more prevalent?

Shadow yachts, also known as support yachts or shadow vessels, are auxiliary vessels that accompany a main superyacht, providing additional storage for water toys, helicopters, and vehicles, as well as housing extra crew and guests. Currently, they represent less than 1% of the market.

Where do you see the future of yachts going?

I expect demand to continue at a steady pace in the coming years, especially as more people view yachts as residences rather than just for short trips. We have customers who’ve bought large yachts who anchor them and live in them for several months a year. They might dock in Monaco for six months, for example, and go to the Caribbean for the rest of the year.

David Beckham was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday with Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan to promote their new partnership. But all anyone wanted to talk about was his son.

After the obligatory questions about business and the World Cup, a host on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” lobbed Beckham an out-of-left-field query about how young people can preserve their mental health in the age of social media.

“Children are allowed to make mistakes,” Beckham, 50, said. “That’s how they learn. So, that’s what I try to teach my kids, but you have to sometimes let them make those mistakes as well.”

Just a day earlier, his 26-year-old son Brooklyn Beckham had posted a series of accusations about his soccer-famous father and pop-star-turned-fashion-designer mother, Victoria Beckham.

He said that his parents had controlled him for years, lied about him to the press and sought to damage his relationship with his wife, Nicola Peltz Beckham. Their goal, he said, was to affect the image of a “perfect family.”

“My family values public promotion and endorsements above all else,” he wrote on Instagram. “Brand Beckham comes first.”

That brand has been burnished over decades of professional triumphs, tabloid scandals and slick dealmaking.

Recently, both David and Victoria Beckham put their legacies on-screen in docuseries that cast them as hardworking entrepreneurs and devoted parents. Their image appeared stronger than ever. Now their firstborn child is throwing stones.

Representatives for David Beckham, Victoria Beckham and Brooklyn Beckham did not respond to requests for comment. A representative for Nicola Peltz Beckham declined to comment.

In the U.K., the Beckhams are as close as you can get to royalty without sharing Windsor DNA. David is perhaps the most famous English player in soccer history, while Victoria parlayed her Spice Girls fame into a career as a respected fashion designer.

Their partnership was forged in the cauldron of 1990s celebrity gossip, with their every move—in their careers, their bumpy personal lives and their adventurous senses of personal style—subject to tabloid scrutiny.

“They were Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce before Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce,” said Elaine Lui, founder of the website Lainey Gossip.

Over time, the couple became savvy managers of their own brand, a sprawling modern empire including a professional soccer team, fashion and beauty lines, investment deals and commercial partnerships.

In recent years they each released a Netflix docuseries—“Beckham” in 2023, “Victoria Beckham” in 2025—featuring scenes from their private family life. (Brooklyn and Nicola appeared in David’s series, but not Victoria’s.)

“The way they’ve performed their celebrity has been togetherness,” Lui said: Appearing and engaging with the world as a happily married couple, in both relative calm and amid scandal. And as their family grew, their four children became smiling ambassadors for Brand Beckham, too.

Until Monday night. In a series of Instagram Story posts, Brooklyn accused his parents of “trying endlessly to ruin” his marriage to Nicola, an actress and model, and the daughter of billionaire investor Nelson Peltz . Brooklyn declared, “I do not want to reconcile with my family.”

Where Victoria and David seemed to see press scrutiny as part of the job, Brooklyn and Nicola are operating in a manner more typical of their own generation. Brooklyn’s posts call to mind the “no contact” boundaries some children have enforced with their parents in recent years to much pop-psych chatter.

Andrew Friedman, managing director of crisis communications at Orchestra, said he’d advised many clients through family drama. “Going public,” he said, should be a “last resort.”

He’s also warned clients that using social media to air grievances opens a can of worms. “Nuance is not welcome in social-media feeding frenzies,” Friedman said. “Sensational and unusual details will overshadow the central issue.”

Brooklyn, the eldest of the Beckhams’ four children, has built a following in his parents’ image, though without the benefit (or burden) of a steady career.

He’s worked as a model, photographer, cooking-show host and most recently founded a hot-sauce brand. Brooklyn and Nicola went public with their relationship in 2020 and married in a lavish 2022 ceremony at her family estate in Palm Beach, Fla.

Rumors of a family feud flared almost immediately after the wedding, including whispers about the fact that Nicola didn’t wear a dress made by her fashion-designer mother-in-law.

Brooklyn on Monday recounted further grievances related to a mother-son dance and the seating chart. In the months and years that followed, celebrity journalists and fans closely tracked both generations of the family, looking for cracks in the relationship.

But official dispatches from Beckham World suggested that things were just fine. In a scene from the final episode of David’s Netflix series, the Beckham family, including Brooklyn and Nicola, joke around on a visit to their country home. It’s a picture of familial bliss.

“We’ve tried to give our children the most normal upbringing as possible. But you’ve got a dad that was England captain and a mom that was Posh Spice,” David says in voice-over.

“And they could be little s—s. And they’re not. And that’s why I say I’m so proud of my children, and I’m so in awe of my children, the way they’ve turned out.”

YACHT BUYERS ARE GETTING YOUNGER, SAYS AZIMUT/BENETTI EXEC

In a series of social-media posts, the eldest child of David and Victoria Beckham threw stones at the image of a ‘perfect family’.