Princess Yachts Drops Hong Kong Distributor, Goes Direct

A Direct Line Where a Distributor Used to Stand

Princess Yachts confirmed on 13 August 2026 that it has set up Princess Yachts Asia, a wholly owned subsidiary based in Hong Kong, to sell and service its yachts directly across Hong Kong, Greater China and surrounding markets. The new entity replaces the distributor arrangement that had represented the brand in the territory. Chief executive Will Green framed the move as a customer-facing decision rather than a cost one: 'By bringing Princess closer to our clients in these important markets, we are strengthening the ownership experience and giving owners more direct access to the people, expertise and support behind every Princess yacht.'

Running the new operation is Adam Waters, who led the Hong Kong distributorship from 2014 to 2024 before it passed to a locally appointed distributor, Sunazure NextWave, in September 2024. Waters now returns to the territory as managing director, this time as a Princess employee rather than an independent dealer principal. The company has not disclosed what happens to the staff or facilities of the outgoing distributor, or whether any of them transfer into the new subsidiary.

Why a Private-Equity Owner Wants Its Own Showroom

Princess has been owned by KPS Capital Partners, a New York private equity firm with roughly $14 billion under management, since KPS completed its buyout from L Catterton in 2023. Bringing sales, warranty and aftersales in-house is a familiar PE playbook in yachting: it removes a distributor's margin from the chain, gives the owner direct data on who is buying and why, and lets a brand control the client experience it is trying to sell at the next step up in price. Will Green, a 20-year Princess veteran who became chief executive in August 2023 - five months after the KPS deal closed - has now run the direct-to-market case in one of the yard's fastest-growing regions.

The trade-off is that a distributor also absorbs local risk the manufacturer would otherwise carry itself: language, import paperwork, marina relationships, and the up-front cost of showrooms and service bays. Princess is choosing to carry that risk directly in Hong Kong and Greater China, which only makes sense if the company expects the region's order volume to justify the overhead - a bet on Asia at a moment when several European yards are cutting back rather than expanding. SuperyachtTimes has counted more than 75 superyacht owners based in Hong Kong alone, before counting the wider Greater Bay Area and mainland China, which is the concentration of existing and repeat buyers a direct sales team is built to serve.

The X90 Lands as the First Model Under the New Structure

The new operation is introducing the Princess X90 to the market, a 27.11-metre flybridge-less flagship of the X range designed with Pininfarina and Bernard Olesinski naval architecture, built on Princess's hybrid progressive-planing hull. She carries a top speed of 26 knots on twin diesels, cruises at 22 knots, and sleeps eight guests in five staterooms with four crew. This desk reported in July that the X90 reached sea trials with 16 hulls already sold before completion - a strong order book that a direct Asia operation can now sell against without a distributor's allocation sitting between the yard and the buyer.

For a buyer in Hong Kong or mainland China, that removes a layer of negotiation: order timing, specification changes and delivery slot priority are now a conversation with Princess itself rather than with a dealer working its own allocation against demand from other markets. Whether that means faster delivery or simply more direct pricing pressure is not yet public.

What an Owner Should Check Before Buying In

Princess has not published how the new subsidiary is staffed, whether it has its own service yard and travel-lift or subcontracts haul-outs locally, or what happens to warranty claims opened before 13 August 2026. An owner mid-relationship with the outgoing distributor should ask, in writing, whether their existing warranty file, spares order and any pending works transfer cleanly to Princess Yachts Asia, and on what timeline the new operation expects to have full parts stock and technicians in place.

None of that is a criticism unique to Princess: every distributor-to-direct transition in yachting has run through the same gap between the announcement and the new office actually being fully staffed. It is simply the thing to check before treating 13 August as the day service quality changed, rather than the day the paperwork did.

The Wider Bet: Asia Against a Consolidating Europe

The timing sits against a European brokerage and builder market that is, by this desk's own recent coverage, going through real strain: MarineMax's board has agreed to a $1.5 billion buyout by Blackstone, Ferretti's order book has shrunk and drawn a UBS downgrade, and Italian Sea Group is under formal bidding for its yards after insolvency protection. Princess going direct in Hong Kong and Greater China reads as a bet that Asia-Pacific demand for a British 27- to 40-metre flagship range still has room to grow while parts of the traditional European brokerage chain are being bought, downgraded or broken up.

The next thing to watch is whether Princess extends the same direct model to other distributor territories, and whether rival British and Italian yards follow it into Asia rather than continuing to sell through third-party dealers there. Neither has been announced. Part of the underlying bet is geographic as much as commercial: the Greater Bay Area linking Hong Kong, Macau and nine mainland Guangdong cities gives an owner based there more than a thousand islands and a genuinely varied coastline to cruise without leaving the region, the kind of home cruising ground that supports repeat ownership rather than a single boat bought and sold on.