How To set-up a successful yacht charter company
Yes! After many years we have finally given up to the dozens of requests we have received to build a comprehensive guide on How To set-up a successful yacht charter company and build your own charter business. Today, much more than 10 years ago, I am confident we can deliver a lot more value as the business of yacht charter is not only based on the experience you have on boats but also on how efficient and effective you are at winning new clients.
We are going to look at the business of yacht charter from the perspective of those who actually want to buy and manage a vessel and charter it . The mere yacht brokerage firm is a much simpler business model which are going to describe in details later on in the guide.
Whether you are approaching Yacht charter as a retirement plan and you are looking for an activity that is somewhat fun and offsets the cost of running your boat during your trip around the world or you are thinking of yacht charter as a business to grow and profit from we will try to cover all of the topics that we believe are appropriate to
Here it is a preliminary list of elements we are going to discuss:
- Finding the right boat/yacht
- Can I run a yacht charter business solo ?
- Motor vs sail, and monohull vs multihulls (catamarans)
- Contracts and service standards
- Geographic areas and extended charter seasons
- Crew, skippers, and flags/registrations
- Marketing common mistakes
- Itineraries
- Onboard equipments and amenities
- Bareboat vs Crewed + Bareboat with skippers
- Web Platform to market your boat
- Brokers, Central Agents, and how much you should give them
- Foreign Flags and U.S. waters
- Drugs onboard, international waters, capitan’s liability vs company liabilities
- Payment terms and methods
- Internet marketing DOs and Don’t
Please don’t forget to register your interest to be notified when we the guide is ready.
UPDATE 22/June/2017: As we received plenty of requests we are also going to publish a Yacht Charter Business Template on Excel which takes into account a typical scenario of acquisition and refitting of a vessel and the charter operations. This is a very unique business model developed in Microsoft Excel which you can customise according to the type of vessel and expenses you are facing during the process. We have looked for something similar and we have not found anything useful for this purpose, therefore, for we have decided to build it for you and make it available for purchase at a very competitive price. Don’t forget to subscribe to be notified of when it is going to be available .
Is Investing in Yacht Charter profitable today? Yacht Charter Market Analysis
In 14 years of business at Rodriquez Consulting we have served a variety of Yacht Charter companies and private owners who were keen on chartering their yachts. More often than we would expect we get asked the usual question: Is yacht charter profitable and/or is it a good business to get in?
In many industries the above questions would be rather simple questions to answer. However, in the yachting industry answering these questions with anything else other than “It depends..” requires us to get into more details. At the very least, we need to get into the specifics of the size segment you choose, primary geographic area and the yacht charter business model that you intend to implement.
To most people Yacht Charter rates seem to be very high as an absolute per-week-value, but are they high enough when you consider the cost of the asset/s (the yacht/s) and its running costs? The latter can have a very large range as variable costs depending on how and where the vessel is managed and can make a significant difference. Ultimately, it the acquisition price (the price of the vessel) that is crucial but the variable and fix costs are the ones that can determine whether the operation (your yacht charter business) is profitable or not. If you are looking to build a business plan to charter yachts and get in the business this article will be useful, however, you might want to contact us for more ad-hoc support. Read more
