About Us

The pace of the place

Porto Cervo is not a town. It is a village invented and built from nothing: in the early 1960s the Aga Khan IV and a group of investors bought a stretch of empty coastline in northern Sardinia and assembled the Costa Smeralda consortium. The architects worked under a strict code — low silhouettes, granite, tiled roofs, no building taller than a pine, no advertising along the roads. Hence the strange feeling of the place: it looks like an old Mediterranean village that never existed.

A few hundred people live here permanently. In August tens of thousands are on the Costa Smeralda at once, the marina fills to the last metre — around seven hundred berths, including quays for vessels over a hundred metres — and for four weeks Porto Cervo turns into one of the densest concentrations of capital in Europe. Then somebody switches it off.

For us that means an entirely different planning rhythm from Milan or Dubai. In June and September a request closes comfortably in two or three days, the manager replies in three minutes, matching takes 30-60 minutes. In the second half of July and through August the horizon shifts: comfortable is two to four weeks out, and "for tonight" at the height of August we call a narrow choice rather than a refusal.

The typical client here is a guest on his own or a chartered yacht, less often a guest at one of the consortium hotels, less often still someone renting a villa on Pevero or at Liscia di Vacca for a fortnight. The crowd is Italian, Middle Eastern and Russian-speaking, with a visible share of business owners from northern Europe. It is a grown-up audience that has been coming back for years and does not care for fuss.

The season: June to September, and what happens the rest of the year

Let us be blunt, because this is the single most important fact about Porto Cervo: from late October to April the village is effectively shut. The consortium hotels — Cala di Volpe, Romazzino, Pitrizza, Cervo Hotel — open in late April or May and close in October. Billionaire runs roughly June to September. The boutiques along Promenade du Port sit behind shutters all winter, the Piazzetta keeps two or three places open for locals, and in the evening it is empty.

So we do not pretend to work in Porto Cervo year-round. A request for November through March we either move to another city in the network — Milan, Rome, Monaco — or handle as a companion travelling in for specific dates, with separate logistics and separate lead times. That is more honest than taking a booking and explaining afterwards that the restaurant has been closed since October.

The season splits into three uneven parts. June is the warm-up: the weather is already summer, the water still cool, hotel rates below peak, the marina half full. The exception is the Loro Piana Superyacht Regatta in early June — a week when the large sailing yachts gather in Porto Cervo and the marina is packed as tight as in August.

July and August are the dense season. The peak falls on the second half of July and all of August, with the maximum around Ferragosto, 15 August. In those days a table at the Cala di Volpe Barbecue is booked a week ahead, walking into Billionaire without a table booked is a lottery, and the drive from the Piazzetta to Cala di Volpe that takes ten minutes in June takes half an hour in the evening.

September is the second wave and, for many regulars, the best month of the year. The water is warm, the crowds are gone, the hotels are still open. The first half of September brings the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup — a maxi-class regatta run under the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda burgee, another week when the marina is completely full and the evening programme is spread across the boats.

Where we work

Marina di Porto Cervo and Porto Vecchio are the main point. This is where the yachts sit, along with the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda, the waterside restaurant Il Pescatore and the tender docks. A large share of our meetings in Porto Cervo begins at a pontoon rather than in a hotel lobby: the guest lives on board, and the logistics are built around when the tender comes in.

The Piazzetta and Promenade du Port are the upper tier of the village. A covered arcade of boutiques, bars, the evening aperitivo, the point where half of the Costa Smeralda gathers by nine. Distances here are walking distances: a hundred metres from the Piazzetta to Cervo Hotel, five minutes downhill to the marina.

Cala di Volpe is a bay fifteen minutes south. Hotel Cala di Volpe with its famous bar and barbecue, the Matsuhisa restaurant on the hotel grounds, the Pevero golf course next door. The most frequent setting for a proper dinner.

Romazzino, Pitrizza and Liscia di Vacca are the quiet addresses. Consortium hotels with direct access to the water and far fewer people around than at Cala di Volpe. We suggest a meeting here when a client wants calm and low footfall. Nearby are the Colonna Pevero Hotel and the villas of the private estates.

The beaches — Liscia Ruja, Romazzino, Principe, Capriccioli — cover the daytime format. Liscia Ruja is the longest beach on the Costa Smeralda, with loungers and a couple of beach restaurants. Principe is a small bay next to Romazzino, named after the Aga Khan, and the usual spot for tenders to come ashore.

Baja Sardinia and Poltu Quatu are 10-15 minutes north. Phi Beach on the Forte Cappellini headland with its sunset programme, the Ritual club cut into the granite rock, the 7Pines Resort Sardinia, and Grand Hotel Poltu Quatu in its narrow inlet. We move here for the evening when a client wants to change the scene.

Trips out: Porto Rotondo (25 minutes), San Pantaleo with its Thursday market (20 minutes), Olbia (30-40 minutes), Palau and the ferry to La Maddalena (40 minutes), the La Maddalena archipelago by water (a little over an hour from the marina). Everything beyond the Costa Smeralda is agreed in advance, minimum a day ahead, and priced by arrangement — we do not publish figures for those formats.

Logistics: the airport, the ferries, and guests who don't stay in hotels

Olbia Costa Smeralda airport (OLB) is thirty to forty minutes along the SS125 and SP59, longer in August. In summer it is one of the busiest private-aviation terminals in Italy: aircraft from Milan, Geneva, London, Dubai, and from Moscow via connecting hubs. Porto Cervo has no airport of its own; the helipad serves charters and island transfers.

The ferries run from Civitavecchia (the port of Rome) and Livorno to Olbia and Golfo Aranci — a crossing of five to eight hours depending on the line and the vessel. Plenty of Italian guests arrive by car this way. The summer timetable is dense, but tickets for August dates go early.

The big difference between Porto Cervo and Monaco or Milan: a large share of guests live on yachts, not in hotels. That changes the whole coordination. Instead of "hotel, lobby, seven thirty" we agree the name of the vessel, the berth or the anchorage, the captain's name, the tender time and the return transfer. If the yacht is lying off Cala di Volpe or near Soffi, the meeting starts at the tender dock in the marina.

We do this routinely, and we have one hard rule: the manager knows the yacht's name and the captain's name before the model leaves. That is not bureaucracy, it is safety — on the water, "just turn up and sort it out there" does not work.

Etiquette and dress code

The Costa Smeralda has a very particular taste, and it is not about shine. Daytime is beach format, but beachwear stays on the beach: you come to a restaurant above the water in a light dress or something over the swimsuit, not in the swimsuit. Evening is Italian smart: linen, silk, length, sandals or a low heel. Between the granite cobbles of the Piazzetta, the wooden gangways and a teak deck, stilettos lose three times in one night.

The Cala di Volpe Barbecue is the most formal evening setting in the village: a long dress is right, and book ahead. Matsuhisa in the same hotel is a shade freer, but still elegant. Spinnaker and Il Pescatore on the water are smart casual — a light dress and a flat sole. Nikki Beach and Phi Beach are day and sunset formats: pale fabrics, minimal jewellery.

Billionaire is the only place in Porto Cervo with a genuine club dress code. The brief is simple: put-together and expensive, no carnival. Ritual in Baja Sardinia is softer, club casual. Neither place welcomes filming — and our models know that without being told.

On board, the yacht's rules apply, not ours. Shoes come off or change to a pale sole, the bag is small, jewellery is minimal, and photography happens only with the owner's permission. At the consortium hotels the staff have worked with the same guests for decades: a correct arrival means a calm entrance, no luggage, and a visit to a guest agreed beforehand.

Things we say plainly

Minimum slot — 2 hours, €1,500. Four hours — €2,000. Media segment — from €3,500 for two hours and €5,000 for four. A night, twenty-four hours, two days and any trip beyond the Costa Smeralda are on request through the manager; we do not put figures on those formats, not on the site and not in correspondence before the details are discussed.

Realistically, Porto Cervo is not a two-hour town. Two hours will not get you through dinner at Cala di Volpe, nor over to Baja Sardinia and back. In practice the working minimum is four hours, more often the whole evening.

August and the regatta weeks run on a separate regime. Demand on those dates is several times higher, free dates are fewer, and we ask for three to four weeks of planning with a deposit and the model fixed. That covers Ferragosto, the Loro Piana Superyacht Regatta and the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup. For every other date of the season, the standard pricing in this document applies.

The model's travel is a separate subject, best settled on shore. If she is coming in for specific dates from Milan, Rome or Olbia, the journey and accommodation in high season are discussed up front and built into the agreement rather than surfacing afterwards.

Sharing a model's photos with third parties is forbidden. We don't haggle after the meeting. We don't take meetings shorter than two hours. These boundaries are identical across all 58 cities of the network — APEX has worked since 2012, and the rules have not changed in that time.