Personal submarines, prostitutes and simulated warfare: Inside the insanely luxurious world of billionaires superyachts

They’ve got safe houses in New Zealand and private planes full of jet fuel, but cruise-ship-sized yachts are how the planet’s richest people plan to escape a world gone to hell.That’s why, for the yacht industry, bad times are often boom times. “I expect 2025 to be a good year,” Anders Kurtén, the CEO of the brokerage Fraser Yachts Monaco office, told The Post.

The pandemic led to a rise in yacht sales, and he sees the “same type of psychological mechanisms at work” right now. “It’s the ultimate personal freedom,” he said.The growth in yacht sales has happened despite sanctions against Russian buyers, who had previously made up 25% of the top end of the market.“That’s really been backfilled by the Americans, who seem to have this new, hungry appetite for very large yachts,” said Jonathan Beckett, CEO of yacht brokerage Burgess, which has 17 offices across the globe, from New York to Hong Kong.

“I never thought I’d see Americans buying and building boats of this size .But they are.”The largest super-, mega- and giga- yachts can be more than 500 feet and cost half a billion.

Jeff Bezos’ $500 million Kuro stretches to 417 feet and it doesn’t even crack the world’s top 10 largest.The US’s 902 billionaires are still finding fresh ways to enhance these floating mansions.

Yachts like the 255-foot ENERGY— which Fraser is listing for €199 million, or roughly $230 million — have Steinway baby grand pianos in the music lounges, beauty salons and beach clubs as standard kit.. “You’ll have a full spa team with a beauty technician and a big boat will have a Botox specialist on board,” said Philippa Smith, the founder and managing director of Silver Swan Recruitment, which staffs the yachts, homes and chalets of the global 1% from their offices in London, Miami and Dubai. She said that the level of service available on today’s yachts now greatly exceeds that of even the most luxurious mansions — because where a dozen...