Charter Seasonality

The Same Boat Is Two Different Businesses in August and December

Yacht-Rent's 2026 statistics set, built from 9,369 listed vessels and updated on 16 September 2026, puts the average advertised charter price at 5,908 euro a week. The highest average week of the year is the one beginning 8 August at 8,299 euro. The lowest is the week beginning 12 December at 4,719 euro.1

That is a 43 per cent fall from peak to trough on the all-market average, which understates what happens inside any single market because the markets do not peak in the same week.

Part one of this series established what a rate card actually contains under the MYBA agreement. This part establishes when that rate applies.

The Size of the Seasonal Swing by Market

Six of the seven markets Yacht-Rent tracks lose 41 per cent or more of their peak price at the bottom of the year, and four lose about half.1

The four Mediterranean markets with the deepest swings, Croatia, Greece, Italy and Spain, are also the four largest by fleet count. Roughly 7,500 of the 9,369 vessels in the sample sit in a market that halves in price at the bottom of the year.

The Caribbean Runs the Calendar Backwards

The Caribbean peaks in the week beginning 14 March and bottoms in the week beginning 26 September.1 Every Mediterranean market in the table does the reverse, peaking in late July or August.

That inversion is worth more than it first appears. It is the reason large charter operators run split fleets, moving hulls between hemispheres, and it is why a single-base fleet carries a concentration of seasonal risk that a two-base fleet does not.

It also means the Caribbean is the most expensive market on average, at 8,470 euro a week against a 5,908 euro global average, and still only loses 43 per cent at its trough. High average price and a moderate swing is the best combination in the table.

Turkey Is the Flattest Season on the List

Turkey has the smallest peak-to-trough fall of the seven markets, at 35 per cent, and the second highest average price at 6,914 euro a week.1 Its peak week, 15 August, lists at 8,605 euro, below Italy, Spain and Greece, but its trough at 5,553 euro is the highest trough of any market in the table.

A flatter curve is worth more to an owner than a higher peak, because the peak weeks are the ones that sell anyway. Revenue is made or lost in the shoulders, and a market whose shoulder price is 5,553 euro rather than 3,790 euro is a materially different asset even before utilisation is considered.

This is the first point in the series where the ranking by headline rate and the ranking by usefulness to an owner come apart. It will not be the last.

When Matters More Than Where

Compare the two ranges in the table. The gap between the cheapest average market, France at 4,299 euro, and the most expensive, the Caribbean at 8,470 euro, is 4,171 euro. The gap between Croatia's own peak and its own trough is 4,117 euro.1

In other words, moving a vessel from the cheapest market in the sample to the most expensive buys roughly the same swing as moving a single charter from December to late July within Croatia.

Location decisions are strategic, expensive and slow. Calendar decisions are made week by week by whoever runs the booking sheet. The second lever is larger and is pulled far more often, which is a reasonable argument for scrutinising an operator's booking performance harder than its base.

Why a Year Round Base Is a Different Proposition

A market with no defined off season changes the shape of the problem rather than the size of it. Where a Mediterranean hull earns a high rate for roughly a quarter of the year and a halved rate for the rest, a tropical base can in principle sell a narrower band of rates across twelve months.

The published evidence for this is thinner than the Mediterranean series, because the large listing platforms are weighted towards Croatia, Greece and Italy. The one figure this library has sourced directly comes from Seychelles charter data across roughly 100 vessels, which showed a 48.2 per cent average annual booking rate at 9,021 euro a week, with peak-season rates at 78 per cent. That analysis is set out in full in the yield on cost note on the catamaran correction.

Both halves of that figure matter and they are usually quoted separately. A 9,021 euro average week is above every Mediterranean market in this table. A 48.2 per cent annual booking rate is what part three of this series examines.

What Seasonality Does to an Annual Revenue Estimate

The common error in charter underwriting is to multiply a headline weekly rate by an assumed number of weeks. Seasonality makes that arithmetic wrong in a predictable direction, because the weeks that go unsold are disproportionately the cheap ones, and the weeks that sell are disproportionately the expensive ones.

That cuts both ways. It means a gross revenue estimate built on the annual average rate understates a well-run vessel, and a gross revenue estimate built on the peak rate overstates almost everything.

Neither estimate is a return. Revenue has to survive commission, the operator's share, the fixed cost stack of berth, insurance and yard work, and then depreciation before anything reaches an owner. The full walk from rate card to net is what this series is for, and the pillar page on yacht charter investment returns summarises where it lands.

Where This Analysis Is Weakest

These are advertised prices from one platform's inventory, not transaction prices. Late discounting is normal in this market, and the realised price in a weak shoulder week will sit below the listed one, which would make the true seasonal swing wider rather than narrower.

The sample is weighted heavily towards bareboat charter in the Mediterranean. Croatia and Greece alone account for 6,234 of the 9,369 vessels. Crewed and superyacht charter behaves differently and is not represented here.

The trough weeks in several markets fall in December and January, when some listed vessels are not genuinely available. A price quoted for a week nobody intends to sell is a weak observation, and this is the main reason to treat the peak-to-trough percentages as indicative rather than precise.

No figure in this article is a return, targeted or otherwise, and none of it describes any particular fund or programme.