The pleasure boat market in Italy

Pleasure boats are boats, sail or motor used in a leisure environment as opposed to professional and racing boats. Usually, this class of vessels promotes comfort and safety. The recreational boating industry involves several players, including:

Manufacturers

Equipment manufacturers

Engine manufacturers

Ports and their associated services

Other services, such as rentals

This market can be segmented by type of product offered: propulsion boat (sail or motor) and by boat size (from small boats under 4 meters to yachts over 20 meters in length). The global pleasure boat market size was valued at 29.0 billion USD in 2019, and it is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.5% from 2021 to 2028

At the beginning of the twentieth century, recreational boating, as it is now understood, i.e., as a phenomenon that touches almost all classes of the population, was absolutely unthinkable: there existed throughout Italy a very limited number of boats (around 30) understood as private units that were used for sports and recreational activities by an extremely restricted elite of people. With the "boom" of economic recovery in the 1960s things began to change and from then on the number of leisure boats in the country continued to increase as to reach a total of 95.611 registered boats between motorboats, sail boats and recreational vessels in 2019.

Italy is nowadays considered a leader at the world level in the superyacht sector. The Global Order Book, elaborated by Boat International, places the Italian industry at the top for orders of yachts over 24 meters, with 407 yachts under construction out of a total of 821 at global level. Moreover, in Italy there are some of the oldest and most renowned shipyards and also the boat rental market is extremely developed.

The leisure boat market in this country thus represents an extremely interesting investment opportunity both for boats manufacturers and for the whole economy which revolves around the nautical sector.