I am sure I am not the only one who has noticed this; the ups and downs of the yachting industry of the past 15 years have cleared the market from improvised market players and have consolidated the positions of other players. Generally speaking, those yachting industry players who are 15 years or older that are still trading in 2017 know what they are doing.

I’m confident it hasn’t been easy for any of the market players in the industry to go through the above mentioned ups and downs, however, it surely was more challenging for those who play a numbers game more than for others. In other words, those players whose business is based less on the historical relationships with a handful of U-HNWI owners to buy and sell their vessels over and over again and more on the lion share of the yachting industry market the mid-high level charter (12m-45m yachts).

BoatBookings.com

Among these players I had the pleasure to meet with the team of BoatBookings.com. The internet is surely where the focus has been in the last 5-6 years with all the “I wanna-be the Airbnb of boats” coming up and investing in UX, and Web development  [FYI: if you want to work with us never tell me You want to be the airbnb of boats please unless you have 30 million euros hanging you don’t know what to do with ok? or I’ll just leave without saying goodbye], but BoatBookings.com is over 10 years old and that makes them a pioneer among the yachting players online. With traffic in the millions of viewers every year they serve from the bareboat charter clients to the 50 meter super yacht charter clients and they do it very well in the sense that each broker is very competent and knows very well what makes a charter a successful one despite the wide variety of client types they serve.

It’s not surprising BoatBookings has a competent and dynamic CEO – Mrs DeValle – who takes great care of her whole team beyond their business training all the way to their physical wellness with scheduled fitness sessions at their office in Cannes.

A valuable and competent CEO, would not be able to do well for its business without a great team and if you hop on their LiveChat on BoatBookings.com to ask some information regarding a yacht charter trip that you are planning, regardless of your budget, you will realise immediately you are NOT talking with an outsourced contact center in a low cost country but with real brokers with hundreds of hours of training and thousands of nautical miles of yachting from their Cannes office. 

Boatbookings.com great strengths are their speed, with almost immediate response on all yacht availability, their competence in advising both expert sailors as well as newcomers and their first hand knowledge of  itineraries and vessels to best suit the needs of a diverse global clientele.

Maybe some of you are thinking, oh that is easy to do and it’s a broker should be doing, well if you are thinking that you have probably never tried to do it or were extremely lucky with all your yacht charters. Trust me, it’s not easy to deliver a service as BoatBookings.com does.

If you are passionate about Yachting and would like to become affiliated to boatbookings.com here is the link to their affiliate program

If you are a yacht owner a former owner or you are simply looking to try your first yacht holiday these guys know what they are doing, give them the opportunity to prove it to you. Those of you who have experience in the business and decide to speak to Boatbookings.com will know the quality of the people you are speaking with in the first 2 minutes of conversation.

Do you want to start Yacht Charter operations with your boat?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to the Americas Cup and the associated media exposure, it seems that ,at last, the world of leisure boats and yachting is ready to start considering hydrofoil technology as a viable technology. We could not be happier as the Rodriquez family pioneered hydrofoils more than 65 years ago (see History). Indeed, in 1951 when Carlo Rodriquez was building the first commercial hydrofoil for passenger transportation purposes no marine transportation company was farsighted enough to see the future which was being written. Carlo, had to start his own high speed transportation company(SNAV) to prove to his shipyard’s prospective clients that hydrofoils were not a dream but a solid reality. The company was SNAV (Società Navigazione Alta Velocità) and it was effectively raising the bar by an average 20-25 knots in every-day marine passenger transportation.

The model was the Pt20 which was travelling at with 70 passengers at 30 knots cruise speed powered by one 1350hp engine built on specs by Mercedes marine (now MTU).

Only in the 70s a yacht version of the Pt20 built by Rodriquez was used by the James Bond’s movie Thunderball (See footage below)

Many years later the now super famous company Hobie Cat headed by Greg Ketterman  applied hydrofoil technology to build the world’s fastest production sailboat, namely the Trifoiler. Then noticed that the market wasn’t yet ready to enjoy this speeds as hydrofoils were yet not considered safe enough.

In 2013-2015 it seems that the time is finally right for the boaters to start foiling and quite a few shipyards are moving the first steps around this technology. One example in the sailing world is Gun Boats (https://www.gunboat.com) with their

G4 foiled catamaran.Sailing hydrofoil Gunboat g4

We are not sure that catamaran are the safest route to take when hydrofoil technology is applied for the general public outside of the insanity of the race boats of the Americas cup, however, it’s certainly through experimenting that innovative solutions and control systems will be developed and implemented in the leisure boat industry.

Hydrofoil technology is essentially aimed at maximising the efficiency and lowering consumption and we did not have to wait to long to see the first few examples of electric hydrofoils for private use such as the Quadrofoil. (image below)

Quadrofoil- electric hydrofoil

In mid-sized power catamaran there are mild applications of foil technology (Foil assisted boats) like the on of South Africa based company  Hysucraft (www.hysucraft.com).

Even in the world of board sports the trend seem to have exploded with foiled kite surf, windsurfs, regular surf board.

In 2015, we actually stumbled upon an event dedicated to hydrofoil technology called the Foiling Week (www.foilingweek.com) and we plan on getting more information on the topic and keep you up to date.

The trend on hydrofoil technology is doubtlessly here and most probably it’s here to stay and will be be significantly boosted by the media exposure of the Americas Cup.

At Rodriquez Consulting we hope that this trend will not be taken lightly from a technical point of view. It would be best to avoid the ‘Just add foils’ type of attitude of shipyards venturing in this technology. After all when the Rodriquez shipyards started building hydrofoils those were operated and maintained by professionals and the R&D behind each project was significant. A professional, serious approach to hydrofoil technology guaranteed many decades of safe operations (some of the earliest hydrofoils are still moving passengers around the world).

The hydrofoil technology implemented on pleasure boats requires an even more thoughtful technical process to avoid vessels that are not technically sound to go out on the market to non-experienced pleasure boaters.

If your company is considering investing or is already developing a hydrofoil project, go ahead and contact us for technical and strategic support.  Hydrofoils[@]RodriquezConsulting.com  or use the contact us form

Upyacht.com

In the world of the sharing economy some companies have come out trying to shake up the yachting industry but in our view all of them have not really cracked the fundamentals that would really enable them to do so.

A lot of the companies we have seen that position themselves towards the Airbnb of boating have done a very good job in listing boats and trying to simplify the booking process for renting a boat. One of the few issues we have seen is that very few of them have truly understood that boating is not the process of renting an asset but rather that of delivering an experience.

In the the difference between renting out assets (boats/yachts) and delivering and experience lays the recent success of companies like The Yacht Week which in truth haven’t revolutionised the market but have identified a target and have made a great job at delivering to a specific 20-somthing target market that essentially requires a alcohol-loaded boating experience.

UPyacht has caught our attention because of its unique membership model which isn’t a share of ownership on a specific boat which would inevitably come with liability and maintenance costs, but simply credit to enjoy boating experiences or boat-time to do whatever one decides to do. Membership makes very much sense in this business because, let’s face it, going on a yacht by yourself isn’t much fun unless you are solo-sailor doing The Race. So here they come with a fresh new concept and from what we have seen a solid set-up.

We have looked into their founding membership offer (agreement and T&C) which seems to be a limited offer that does make a lot of sense to us: In brief a one-time fee of £15000 gives you access to £5000 per year for 3 years worth of yachting with vessels ranging from 30 to 75feet (9-21 meters), their charter rate are published and this level of membership gives you 20% off of their listed price (including the high season) giving customers the possibility to choose their itinerary, share it with other members and friends. All their Yacht are skippered and experiences are from what we see orientated to a wide variety of customers, ultimately it makes sense for a family or even a company to purchase this kind of memberships where the credit can be used for a family holidays on a sailing catamaran or a wakeboarding weekend for the youngsters.  

For more information go to Upyacht.com and let us have your comment if you book a holiday with them.

On June 30th 2015 in Hamburg, Germany, our managing director Leopoldo Rodriquez will be the opening speaker and co-chairman of the Superyacht Interior international conference. He was asked to speak about the future of the superyacht industry, market data and trends. 

The presentation will touch upon some key elements of the super yacht market and its buyers. Leopoldo will speak about the hard data of the prospective global spending on superyachts by 2020 and also about the changing characteristics of the UHNWI target group towards 2020.

For a copy of his presentation please subscibe to our email newsletter it will be available for download after the conference. 

All of those who work in the industry of luxury yachts are familiar with the big international boat shows such as Monaco Yacht Show the one in Cannes, Ft Lauderdale, Miami, Dubai and Genova.  However, thanks to hydrofoil technology getting more popular in the recreational boating industry, we recently stumbled upon a new breed of boat show. It’s a mix between a commercial boat show, a technical conference and a sailing sport event and it’s called The Foiling Week  where hydrofoils are for trial.

It’s only at its second edition (Starting on July 1st on Lake Garda) but we are pretty confident that it will grow and take place in many other places around the world. Did you say UAE?

With the push of the Americas Cup featuring a significant deployment of hydrofoil technology by its shameless contenders we believe The Foiling Week is the boat show format to make boat shows really interesting and exciting again.

Have a look at this video of the first edition:

If you are marina manager you might want to consider to host a Foiling Week.

For more information check out www.FoilingWeek.com

We are delighted to announce that our client the new brokerage firm Yacht Nation has been successful in finding a buyer for the super yacht Nena built by Cantieri di Pisa as reported by Boat International in this article.

The sale of 36m  yacht Nena 1 has been the joint effort of Yachtzoo representing the seller and Yacht Nation who found and represented the buyer throughout the whole transaction.  The negotiation started at asking price of 5.9 million euros.

Built in GRP by Cantieri di Pisa  and designed by Carlo Galeazzi, the vessel was launched in 2009. This yacht for sale was the first in Cantieri Di Pisa’s Akhir 118 semi-custom series and was refitted in 2011.

M/Y Nina 1 Cantieri Di Pisa 36m

Rodriquez Consulting has been supporting the entrepreneurs of Yacht Nation since the start. We have delivered a comprehensive market study to support the client in choosing the right size segment to focus his marketing efforts. Furthermore, the Rodriquez Consulting creative team is directly responsible for the creation (name and brand) of the new brand Yacht Nation.

Yacht Nation might also be a new brand, however, it already has a lot of experience in yacht brokerage, management and sales. Thanos Skliris (Principal) came to Rodriquez Consulting with the objective of creating and yacht brokerage, yacht management and yacht charter firm deploying with much more accuracy and planning than the majority of its competitors.

YACHT NATION logo

The Yacht Nation project started where all business should, from in-depth yacht market research and data analysis provided by Rodriquez Consulting. Our team then analysed the historic trends of brokerage boats in the size segment and geographic areas we had selected to determine the lead to sale goal to set. Furthermore, the Yacht Nation team provided the historic record of all brokerage yachts in their careers to enable Rodriquez Consulting to do an ad-hoc analysis of their professional sale performance.  The result was a clear plan to go forward.

The action plan Rodriquez Consulting created for Yacht Nation was clear and well defined providing for a clear guideline for implementation. Our proprietary M.A.P. – I.D.  (Marketing Action Plan Implementation Dashboard) provided Yacht Nation’s team the following

  1. Marketing Actions to be taken
  2. Tools to use
  3. Frequency of actions
  4. Monitoring tools, KPIs and other metrics
  5. Defined Brand guidelines and branded materials

In the future, Rodriquez Consulting will support Yacht Nation in its marketing efforts to generate the company sales and structural growth.

If you would like to know more about what Rodriquez Consulting can do for your firm and book a preliminary consultation contact us 

Mr Roamer Boogaard was previously Executive Director at the Royal Netherlands Sea Rescue Initiative and had a solid career in the Dutch maritime sector, including the Dutch Royal Navy from 1981-1997.
With expansion plans in mind, and serving for 10 years as Managing Director, Alice Huisman will take the duties of Executive Director alongside Chairman and fellow shareholder Jan Willem Doeksen. Once Mr. Boorgaard’s settles in to handle the daily operations, Alice Huisman will focus on business development, marketing and client relationships.

As many will know I have been serving as Managing Director for the past 10 years,” begins Alice Huisman, “and, together with our new partners at Royal Doeksen, I am of the view that adding this highly talented and capable individual is the next logical step if we are to maintain and expand upon our past successes.

Alice Huisman recognises the value of change and the key role that attracting and retaining the best talent plays in a dynamic organisation. Furthermore, the importance of building a structured organisation will give her the opportunity to focus on key tasks she performs best with a focus on expansion:

“They will provide me with the opportunity to focus more exclusively on our client relationships, while our expanded management team continues to drive forward operational standards and efficiency.”

Royal Huisman welcomes Mr. Boogaard into a business with a significant order book across the full spectrum of our new build and refit activities.

Together with Roemer Boogaard as Managing Director there will be Mr Ronald van Hulst, as Director of Operations. Van Hulst who has 25 years of experience in the business equips the newly appointed Managing Director perfectly in conjunction with the recently appointed Finance Director Harmen Peeters.

For more info go on Royal Huisman website 

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Yacht Technology

Hi-Tech Italian Yacht

One would think that an industry like the yacht industry where clients are Ultra High Net Worth individuals money is no object and that should reflect on pushing technology boundaries forward. Yet if you look at yachts of 2014, there is  a great deal of automation, interior design gimmicks like moving tv and wireless connected devices, but is there truly any game changing technology.

In my view the yacht industry should be what F1 is for the car industry, where new technologies get tested and then translated into widely available technologies. However, as we all know the yachting industry isn’t made of high R&D budgets and mass production of units and therefore this does not happen. On the other hand, one of the greatest business challenges of running a shipyard is securing business that is stable and ongoing which is not easy to do, simply because yachts are probably the ultimate luxury item and therefore marked as a non-urgent expense during periods of economic uncertainty.  As a consequence, some shipyards that can’t afford to rely on new builds alone, go heavily into the service industry extending their areas of operations to Yacht Charters, Yacht refits and after sale services, maintenance and repairs, which are let’s face it all hardly scalable business lines and merely a way to maximise revenue from existing assets and human resources.

What’s the solution then?  Technology is one and more broadly IP is another one.  If you look around you’ll notice that very few big brands in the yacht industry capitalise on their IP or even have any protected IP other than their brand.

Why there is so little valuable innovation and so little game changing technologies coming from the Yacht industry while there is so much coming from the aviation industry.

The initially-criticised Luca Bassani, founder of Wally Yachts who clearly had a background in another industry managed to make a mark in the yacht industry in much less time then most established brands have done, but why? Surely he had enough money to afford it but also had the courage to dare, to re-think things that were traditionally done in a certain way and to challenge and bend the rules enough to give his brand a unique identity in the industry. It’s also noteworthy that almost from the start the Wally brand was on sky equipment and other hi-tech products in different markets.

Yet that of Wally was a slightly different take on the industry but was it really game changing? No it wasn’t. The use of fiberglass is, hydrofoil technology is, as for tubeless tyres on cars and direct fuel ignition.

In brief the role of innovators in the yacht industry is really left to the power units, propulsion systems, electronics manufacturers, and chemical companies; in other words companies like MTU, Caterpiller, ZF, MAN, Raymarine, Akzo Nobel(aka International Yacht Paint) etc.. Whereas companies like Hamilton jet almost prefer not to look at the yacht industry as a whole and focus on commercial marine applications.  Main yacht manufacturing brands seem not to be motivated enough to invest in R&D to develop IP that can be employed in the industry and licensed into other industries providing for a sound and stable scalable economic growth. Why is that?

Leave us a comment we would be glad to take your point of view on the topic of innovation. Why do you think the Yacht Industry is so backward?

We just got back from Monaco Yacht Show 2014 and our first impressions were rather positive considering the general optimism that we noticed while speaking with a number of yacht builders, yacht owners, yacht brokers, designers and component manufacturer. Boero Group export and marketing manager who was attending the show at the Boero Yacht Coatings boot told us Monaco usually doesn’t fall back on expectations and that his first impression was positive. Luciano Bregola CEO of Isa Yachts was confident about future orders and the MTU sales team was very busy with a series of meetings with existing clients and prospective ones. It seems that the Italian builder are getting busier than they were expecting.  As one would expect a few companies that were exhibitors in the previous years were not present at the show, some had reduced their presence however, some others were there ready to do business with the usual enthusiasm and refreshed brands such as that of ISA Yachts that has undertaken a minor re-branding. The first thing we noticed, however, is that the organisers of MYS 2014 have decided to raise the price of tickets to 150 euros per day and 500 for a multi-day pass, which in fairness we believe it is a good move in order to discourage visitors whose pockets and interest are not strong enough to pay this price to visit the show. We all know large yacht owners, brokers and yacht builder don’t quite like their vessels to be too crowded with non-potential customers also due to the extensive time it takes to visit such large vessels so thumbs up for MYS 2014 edition.

On the other hand of the ticket price increase which for the record more than doubled compared to the previous 60 euro price, all exhibitors had plenty of free invitations to invite their prospects, media professionals and other types of interested parties which made it easy for all of us in the industry to invite the right audience to the show.

The show ground was also extended thanks to the the new Yacht Club de Monaco area with its impressive structure in the north part of Port Hercule that also gave much more useful space for exhibitors needing water space and logistic support.

We also noticed a slight reduction in the number of Yacht Magazines which we believe is an appropriate market adjustment considering the lowered marketing budgets most companies say to have this upcoming years.

This 2014 edition of Monaco Yacht Show at first glance seemed to be a positive and optimistic one from a sales point of view, however, we will get back on the specific topic with more updates after exhibitors have settled the show frenzy and will talk to us regarding the real output of the show in terms of business. Don’t forget to sign up to our newsletter to receive updates

From a marketing point of view we were pleasently surprised by a number of interesting techniques to move visitors on the show ground such as Edminston’s Gelato invitations served by the now famous team of red-dressed models, the traditional Feadship panama hats distributed for free to visitors,

Azimut Magellano 43 ADV at Shouthampton Boat Show 2014

Azimut Magellano 43 ADV at Shouthampton Boat Show 2014

“The best boat for british people has been designed in Italy ” this is the daring advertising slogan which displays below the new Magellano 43 exhibited at the PSP Southampton Boat Show  2014. The Azimut-Benetti group is making a move to tackle the british market. Our contacts at Azimut-Benetti group have made it clear that they are here to stay which means that the yacht manufacturing group is not only interested in the city of London foreign and local money but they are targeting the whole of the UK market, which, we believe, is a rather different more established type of marine market.  The choice of bringing the Magellano line here at the Southampton boat show makes it very clear per se, instead of showcasing the faster yachts more suitable for city boys or the young and wealthy London HNWIs, the Magellano is a yacht for a sophisticated mariner that want to enjoy his yacht all year, long range and if need be face the rough seas.

Other than just participating with a the factory team at Southampton boat show 2014, Azimut-Benetti exclusive Monaco and France dealer is in the process of opening a sales office here in London, with a prestigious address as one might expect in Mayfair’s Hannover Square.

We talked with the lovely  Elisabeth Curro, who has been heading the Monaco office of P.B. Yachting Monaco, who will be running the exclusive dealer for Azimut-Benetti in London. Elisabeth sounded confident on the market potential of the city and the country for the Azimut-Benetti brands.  We look forward to attend the opening of this new sales office.

At Rodriquez Consulting we believe there is certainly an interesting market opportunity for this established yacht manufacturer to grow in the UK market and in the growing city market of London which is one of the largest city economies in the world. London is indeed the first or the second home for many  “ultra high net worth individuals” – those with $30m (£21m) or more in assets apart from their main home – number 167,669, according to a report from estate agents Knight Frank – up 59% over the past decade.

Roughly equal to the population of the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea – and many of them do indeed have a place there – they control more than $20 trillion in assets – more than the national output of the US and Germany put together.

London, is, not surprisingly,  home to more UHNWIs (4,224) than any other city in 2013 and this will still be the case a decade later, with nearly 5,000 expected to be living here.

For more information about the city economics and how to penetrate this target niche please contact us.