Puerto Banus (Marbella)

Location

Nueva Andalucia, Marbella, Malaga province, Costa del Sol, at 36 28.98 N 004 57.29 W, green light on the head of the outer mole

Operator

Puerto Jose Banus, S.A., under an administrative concession from the Junta de Andalucia supervised by the Agencia Publica de Puertos de Andalucia

Opened

May 1970, built by the developer Jose Banus and designed by Noldi Schreck with Marcos Sainz as a low-rise Andalusian village around a marina

Berths

915 across 15 hectares and 42,165 square metres of water, for yachts from 8 m to 50 m

Berth inventory

502 at 8 x 2.60 m, 233 at 12 x 3.75, 43 at 15 x 4.30, 83 at 18 x 4.80, 36 at 26 x 5.80, 6 at 30 x 6.50, 1 at 35 x 7, 10 at 50 x 8 and 1 above 50 x 9

Ownership split

194 berths operated by the concessionaire and 721 ceded in preferential use to private holders, who are 82 per cent of the water surface. None of the concessionaire's berths is 30 m or longer

Depths

3 m to 6 m inside the basin and about 7.5 m at the entrance

Speed limit

3 knots in the channel and inside the harbour, with a request not to make a wake

VHF

channel 9, called from within 5 nautical miles; dockhand office on duty 24 hours

Shore power

16 A to 250 A, metered from EUR 0.5133 per kWh below 500 kW a month to EUR 0.3570 above 5,000, plus a daily connection charge of EUR 1.91 to EUR 12.99 by vessel type

Water

metered at EUR 5.11 per cubic metre, 2026 tariff, with a EUR 6.44 minimum service charge

Boatyard

on site, 50 tonne travel lift, lift movements at EUR 16.37 per linear metre to 14 m and EUR 24.02 above, hardstanding from EUR 0.57 per metre per day, all excluding VAT

Tenure

no freehold. Berths trade as a right of preferential use to the end of the concession, granted in 1967 for 99 years and extended by resolution of 30 May 2024, published in the BOJA on 23 April 2025, to 3 October 2066

Investment

a EUR 7,820,000 pontoon replacement programme excluding VAT, 2022 to 2025, which added fifteen new berths, all of them 15 x 4.30 m

Airports

Malaga Costa del Sol about 55 to 60 km and 40 to 55 minutes, Gibraltar about 67 km and 48 to 57 minutes across a land border

Footfall

close to five million visitors a year on Marbella municipality's count, and terraces and beach concessions out-earned all berthing income in 2021

What Puerto Banus actually is

Puerto Banus opened in May 1970 at Nueva Andalucia, about six kilometres west of Marbella town on the Costa del Sol. It was built by Jose Banus, a Spanish property developer, and designed by the architect Noldi Schreck with Marcos Sainz as a low-rise Andalusian village wrapped around a marina rather than a wall of towers. The opening was the point: the Aga Khan, Roman Polanski, Hugh Hefner, Prince Rainier and Princess Grace all attended and Julio Iglesias sang. Fifty-six years later the village is still the shape of the place, and it is still the single most photographed marina in Spain.

The port covers 15 hectares with 915 berths for yachts from 8 to 50 metres, charted depths of 3 to 6 metres inside and about 7.5 metres at the entrance. Marbella's municipality puts annual footfall at close to five million people. It is operated by Puerto Jose Banus, S.A. under an administrative concession from the Junta de Andalucia, supervised by the Agencia Publica de Puertos de Andalucia, and the concession fee the company paid the region in 2021 was EUR 355,063. The control tower on the outer mole is the harbour office, the light on the head of the mole is green, and the marina works VHF channel 9.

The size question, answered by the marina's own numbers

Puerto Banus reads much larger than it is, and the correction is not a matter of opinion. In the economic study Puerto Jose Banus, S.A. filed with the Junta de Andalucia in April 2023 to support its concession extension, the company set out its berth inventory line by line. There are 502 berths of 8 by 2.60 metres, 233 of 12 by 3.75, 43 of 15 by 4.30, 83 of 18 by 4.80, 36 of 26 by 5.80, six of 30 by 6.50, one of 35 by 7, ten of 50 by 8 and one of more than 50 by 9. That is 915 in total, occupying 42,165 square metres of water.

Read that again as a buyer. Eighty per cent of Puerto Banus is boats of 12 metres and under. Fifty-four berths in the whole port are 26 metres or longer. Eighteen are 30 metres or longer. Eleven are in the 50 metre class, and exactly one position is described as over 50 metres. The published 2026 tariff matches: the largest named band is type I at 50 by 9 metres, and anything above it falls into a single unnumbered row called Upper length, with the tariff sheet telling you to consult customer service for any excess of beam or length. If you run a 55 metre yacht, Puerto Banus is not a marina you plan a season around. It is a lunch stop you book a long way out, if the one position is free.

Puerto Banus has 915 berths and eighteen of them are thirty metres or longer, and the marina holds none of those eighteen.

Who owns the water, and why that changes how you book

The second structural fact is stranger than the first. Of the 915 berths, only 194 are operated by the concessionaire. The other 721, which is 79 per cent of the berths and 82 per cent of the water surface, have been ceded in preferential use to third parties. Those holders pay quotas into a berth-holders' community, the Comunidad de Titulares de Puerto Banus, which covers operating and conservation costs and brought in EUR 831,902 in 2021. The concessionaire pays into it too for its own berths, EUR 595,270 in the same year.

Now overlay the size table on the ownership split. Of the marina's own 194 berths, 97 are eight metres, 63 are twelve, 20 are eighteen, twelve are fifteen and two are twenty-six. It holds nothing at 30 metres, nothing at 35, nothing at 50 and nothing above. Every large berth in Puerto Banus, without exception, belongs to a private holder. That means a superyacht looking for a season here is not really dealing with the port at all; it is renting from an individual through a broker, on that individual's terms, and the marina's role is to invoice the fluids and check you in. It also explains why the large-berth market here is opaque in a way the small-berth market is not.

What a berth costs in 2026

Puerto Banus does publish a tariff, which is more than most Spanish marinas of its profile manage. The 2026 sheet runs high season in June, July, August and September, mid season in May and October, and low season from November to April, with prices stated as VAT included and a charge the sheet calls Tax 0 excluded. Daily rates in high season: EUR 50 for 8 by 2.60 metres, EUR 89 for 12 by 3.75, EUR 150 for 15 by 4.30, EUR 198 for 18 by 4.80, EUR 343 for 26 by 5.80, EUR 366 for 30 by 6.50, EUR 537 for 35 by 7, EUR 1,582 for 50 by 8, EUR 2,498 for 50 by 9 and EUR 5,271 for the Upper length row. Low season for the same bands runs EUR 17, 27, 75, 101, 174, 208, 290, 459, 711 and 1,530.

The annual tariffs are the number that matters to anyone based here: EUR 5,017 at 8 metres, EUR 10,971 at 12, EUR 19,402 at 15, EUR 26,173 at 18, EUR 49,870 at 26, EUR 56,143 at 30, EUR 80,216 at 35, EUR 176,714 at 50 by 8, EUR 278,184 at 50 by 9 and EUR 536,618 for Upper length. Note the jump between the two 50 metre bands: one extra metre of beam costs EUR 101,470 a year, so at this port width is priced far harder than length. Long stays are discounted on prepayment, at 15 per cent for a month, 20 per cent for three, 25 per cent for six and 30 per cent for eight months in the October to May window, and only 8 and 12 per cent for one and three months in high season. A reservation needs 50 per cent of the quotation paid up front, and the annual package prepayment discount is advertised at up to 50 per cent, with a reduced parking card and a haul-out, launch and seven days in the yard thrown in.

Buying a berth, and the date on the end of it

You cannot own water in Spain. What changes hands at Puerto Banus is a right of preferential use running to the end of the port's administrative concession, and that end date has just moved. The concession was granted in 1967 for 99 years. The working title ran to 2043, and Puerto Jose Banus, S.A. applied under a 2020 reform of the Andalusian ports law to consolidate the full 99-year term. The Junta de Andalucia settled it by resolution of 30 May 2024, published in the BOJA on 23 April 2025, which records the substantial modification of the concession as an extension of its term to its final period, to 3 October 2066. That is the date, to the day. The 2067 that appears elsewhere is the horizon of the company's own cash-flow model rather than a concession term, and brokerage listings advertising a concession to 2070 are not supported by any official source at all.

The price of the extension was investment. The company committed to a pontoon replacement programme with a contract budget of EUR 7,820,000 excluding VAT, EUR 9,462,200 with it, in three phases across 2022 to 2025: general networks and pontoons 6 and 7 first, then pontoons 3 and 4 with the first stretch of pontoon 2, then pontoons 5 and 8 with the second stretch of 2. The agency set the qualifying investment at EUR 7,845,354.61. Here is the part a large-yacht owner should read twice: the new berths created by that whole programme are five of 15 by 4.30 metres on pontoon 6 and ten more of the same size on pontoon 3. Fifteen new berths, every one of them fifteen metres, and none in phase three. Puerto Banus has spent nearly eight million euros modernising itself and has not added a single metre of large-yacht capacity. On the resale side, the small end is openly priced, with a 12 by 3.75 metre berth on pontoon 4 listed at EUR 96,000 in 2026, while 18, 26, 30 and 50 metre berths are advertised by several brokers with no figure attached at all.

The wind, the entrance, and the surge question

This coast runs on two winds with two names. The levante comes from the east, gusts 20 to 40 knots, kicks up a short steep sea of roughly one to two metres, cuts visibility and typically sits over the area for three to five days at a time, most often in summer. The poniente comes from the west off the Atlantic, usually under 15 knots, and leaves flat and often glassy water, and it is more frequent in spring and autumn. Marbella charter operators treat the poniente as the working wind and the levante as the one that decides whether a smaller boat goes out at all, and they describe Puerto Banus itself as naturally sheltered from the easterly by its position and layout.

The documented hazard here is the entrance rather than the basin. Cruisers reporting on the Costa del Sol have described winter storms pushing sand into the marina entrances along this coast faster than the dredgers clear it, with shoaling at Puerto Banus on the breakwater side marked by a line of starboard-hand buoys, and an explicit warning against entering in an easterly swell. That report dates from April 2015, so treat it as a standing characteristic of the coast rather than a current survey, and get a fresh depth from the dockhand office before you commit a deep hull to the channel. On the specific question of surge inside the basin, Yotters found no documented case of swell damage to boats alongside at Puerto Banus and no published wave-agitation study, and would rather say so than invent one. What is undeniable is that this is an open south-facing coast with no offshore islands and no natural bay, so the protection is entirely what the two moles provide.

The security, the crowd, and what the accounts reveal

The security story is real and it is recent. On 3 October 2025 a man of 25 was shot dead on a cafe terrace at Puerto Banus; Diario Sur reported the killing and the arrest of a 38-year-old suspect the same evening after a police cordon operation, and El Mundo tied the shooting to organised crime and to Swedish criminal networks operating on the coast. Police responded with intensified patrols and additional cameras at the port. That is one incident, not a pattern anyone should extrapolate from, but it is the kind of thing a berth holder is entitled to know about the place he leaves a boat. The marina itself runs 24-hour security with CCTV and round-the-clock dockhands, and it spent EUR 488,095 on security in 2021 and EUR 677,620 in 2020. In 2021 that made security the second largest identified operating line in the filing, behind the EUR 595,270 the concessionaire paid into the berth-holders' community in the same year.

The crowd is not incidental to Puerto Banus, it is the business model, and the accounts prove it. In 2021 the concessionaire took EUR 7.26 million of income. Berthing, both its own berths and the ceded ones, produced EUR 1.91 million of that, about a quarter. Terraces and beach concessions alone produced EUR 1.93 million, narrowly more than all berthing combined, by about EUR 17,500 on figures of roughly EUR 1.9 million each. Add non-port parking at EUR 1.05 million, non-port supplies at EUR 0.64 million, advertising and events at EUR 0.31 million and a residual EUR 0.27 million of other non-port income, and the non-marina side of the house comes to EUR 4.20 million, 58 per cent of the total. The fuel station, by comparison, turned over EUR 70,594. Puerto Banus is a shopping, dining and beach-club estate that happens to sell berths, and roughly five million visitors a year walk the quay you are berthed on. If you want privacy, this is the wrong port on the Mediterranean, and no amount of tinted glass fixes it.

Getting there, and arriving

Malaga Costa del Sol is the airport, roughly 55 to 60 kilometres away and 40 to 55 minutes on the AP-7 and A-7 in normal traffic, with taxis and fixed-price transfers quoted between EUR 70 and EUR 95 and the common fixed rate around EUR 79 to EUR 85. It is a proper international airport with long-haul reach, which is the single biggest practical advantage Puerto Banus holds over the smaller Andalusian ports. Gibraltar is the other option at about 67 kilometres by road, 48 to 57 minutes, but it involves a land border crossing and a runway that closes to road traffic for every movement, so it makes sense for a London arrival and rarely for anything else. The port's concierge will arrange the transfer, car hire and provisioning if you ask by email in advance.

By sea the procedure is published and specific. Call the dockhand office on VHF channel 9 when you are within five nautical miles and take your instructions from there; the maximum speed in the channel and inside the harbour is 3 knots and you are asked not to make a wake. Dockhands assist with mooring and are on duty 24 hours. You then check in and pay at the Customer Service office in the control tower, open 08:30 to 18:30 Monday to Friday and 08:30 to 14:00 and 16:00 to 18:30 at weekends; if you arrive outside those hours the dockhands will check you in and assign a berth. Bring a crew and passenger list, copies of the master's and owner's passports, the boat's registration and insurance, your estimated times of arrival and departure, your last port and next destination, and a valid credit card. Check-in is any time; you must be off the berth by 12:00 on the day you leave or another night is charged. The fuel station runs 08:00 to 18:00 from November to April and 07:00 to 20:00 from May to October.

The yard, the fluids, and the honest gaps

There is a working boatyard on site, which is unusual for a marina of this profile, but it is sized for the fleet the port actually holds rather than the one its reputation implies. The travel lift is rated at 50 tonnes, and the 2026 tariff charges lift movements at EUR 16.37 per linear metre for boats up to 14 metres and EUR 24.02 per linear metre above that, with the mobile crane at EUR 53.50 for hulls to 5.99 metres and EUR 75.33 from 6 to 8 metres. Hardstanding runs EUR 0.57 per metre per day in the first month, EUR 0.71 in the second and EUR 0.88 in the third, with a wintering area at EUR 0.82, all excluding VAT. Any yard service outside business hours or on a holiday carries a 100 per cent surcharge. Fluids are metered: water at EUR 5.11 per cubic metre and electricity on a sliding scale from EUR 0.5133 per kWh below 500 kW a month down to EUR 0.3570 above 5,000, plus a daily connection charge of EUR 1.91 to EUR 12.99 by vessel type, and minimum service charges of EUR 4.91 for power and EUR 6.44 for water. Shore supply is quoted at 16 to 250 amps.

Three gaps are worth stating plainly. First, the port's own arrival instructions cover documents, berthing, parking and cancellation in detail and say nothing at all about customs or immigration, so a yacht arriving from outside the EU or Schengen should settle that with the port and the Spanish authorities before departure rather than on the quay. Second, no fuel price is published, and no price is published for any berth above the tariff's named bands, where the sheet simply says to consult customer service. Third, parking is a real running cost here rather than an afterthought: the annual access cards are EUR 2,090 for the classic, EUR 1,555 intermediate, EUR 760 reduced and EUR 560 for a provider, VAT included, and every customer buys one. Add the berth-holders' community quota on a bought berth and the headline annual tariff is not the whole bill.

Pour qui: An owner of a boat between 12 and 26 metres who wants a Marbella address, a long-haul airport an hour away and a published tariff, and who does not mind five million people a year walking past his stern.