By Anestis Tsamouridis · Yacht Broker, Cyprus
A family business, built rather than inherited
I co-founded Sea Trip in 2018 with my family. It began as a yacht charter business in Cyprus and grew into something broader — charter, events, management, and eventually brokerage.
Building it taught me the part of this industry that clients rarely see: what it costs to keep a vessel in genuinely good condition, how quickly deferred maintenance becomes structural, and how a season of hard charter use shows up in a survey three years later.
What hospitality taught me about buyers
My background before yachting was hospitality. The instinct it builds is simple and it transfers directly: listen for the actual requirement underneath the stated one.
Most first conversations about buying a yacht start with a length and a budget. Neither is usually the real constraint. The real constraint is how the boat will be used — family weekends, long passages, entertaining, or charter income — and that determines almost everything else.
I would rather spend an hour on that question than three months showing you the wrong vessels.
Why Cyprus
Cyprus sits between three markets and inside the EU. That combination gives owners real advantages — flag registration, VAT treatment within an EU framework, and a cruising position that reaches Greece, the Levant and Egypt within comfortable range.
It also has genuine complexity. Marina capacity is uneven across the island, berth availability at Limassol Marina is not the same conversation as Latchi or Zygi, and the practical logistics differ from what a buyer used to the western Mediterranean expects.
Knowing which of those details actually affect a decision is most of what I do.
How I work
I am selective, deliberately. I take on clients whose requirements I can genuinely serve, and I say so when I cannot — a buyer looking for a specific vessel type that rarely trades in this market is better served by hearing that early.
I work in several languages, which matters here. A transaction can involve a Greek-speaking yard, an English contract, and a buyer who would rather discuss the difficult parts in Russian.
And I stay involved after the handover. The questions that follow ownership — berthing, maintenance, crew, whether to charter — are where a broker either proves useful or disappears.