Spain’s Costa del Sol to Welcome Luxury Travellers with New Mega-Yacht Marina

The new mega-yacht marina will be built in Malaga, while the nearby town of Marbella will be home to a brand new Four Seasons luxury hotel come 2020

The port city of Malaga on Southern Spain’s Costa del Sol is getting a new mega-yacht marina. The capital of the Spanish region of Andalusia, Malaga is a major transit hub, with most travellers to the region usually flying into the coastal city before heading to Costa del Sol’s yellow sand beaches and its colourful cities like Seville.

But in what could mark the beginning of a new era of luxury travel for the area, the Malaga marina will accommodate a maximum of 40 mega-yacht vessels, from 30 to 100 metres in length, and will cover 41,484sqm of water and 4,830sqm of land. There will also be a 770-metre pier, according to Spanish expat paper The Olive Press.

The publication has reported that bidding has opened for the space at the Marques de Guadiaro dock in the city’s port, with the maximum bid set at €9.5 million and interested investors given three months to make their offers before the successful bidder is announced in February 2019.

The announcement of Malaga’s new marina comes following the news that a new Four Seasons hotel will also be opening in the tourist-thronged summer party town of Marbella in a bid to transform the area into a luxury destination and battle the town’s seasonality.

The town has developed a reputation in recent years as a loutish party destination especially popular with British hens’ and bucks’ parties, its upmarket areas like Puerto Banus becoming increasingly tarnished, and the council is now hoping to inject some serious glamour back into the city.

Four Seasons will manage the hotel, as well as the private residences and villas, and the complex will include internationally-renowned restaurants that will come to Spain solely for this project. Scheduled to open in 2020, the €600 million resort will be designed by architect Richard Meier and will occupy a 400,000 square metre area in the Los Monteros area of Marbella, with 700 metres of beach frontage.

Before the Marbella project is complete, however, Four Seasons will be opening another hotel –its first in Spain – in the Spanish capital of Madrid in Centro Canalejas in the heart of the city. Catering to a growing luxury market in the city (Madrid is one of Europe’s strongest luxury property markets, according to Knight Frank), the hotel will feature 200 rooms and suites that will be among the largest in the city, two restaurants, an indoor swimming pool, a spa, and 22 residences that are already up for sale, starting at €2.4 million.

According to Ricardo Arranz, President of Villa Padierna Hotels & Resorts, the land-owners who are partners in both Four Seasons projects, said: “Marbella and Madrid need the glamour that these types of brands give.”