|
Charter your private yacht - by Tony KingHow to charter your private fully crewed boat or yachtMany people ask how to put their private boats into charter. First, to tell them is, that chartering is not a get-rich-quick scheme, especially in today’s environment of astronomical insurance rates, fuel prices, etc., but is useful either to defray the costs of boat ownership or to finance a healthy, outdoors lifestyle. There are worse ways to earn a living, let’s face it. Fitting out for charterThe first thing you need to address is the boat. Fitting it out for charter is important, ensuring you have all the required safety and emergency equipment, changing furniture, coverings and carpets with heavy duty and hopefully water-resistant materials and basically making sure that everything works and has a back-up. Then the legal aspects: your own or your captain’s credentials have to be addressed: to charter in US waters, the captain will need a USCG (www.uscg.mil/USCG.shtm) 100 ton master’s license (with appropriate endorsements for sailing if it’s a sailing boat, as well as the more recent requirement of an international STCW certificate (www.stcw.org) which is a “hands-on” safety and emergency equipment certification. In non-US waters, an MCA (UK) (www.mcga.gov.uk/c4mca/mcga-home) captain’s certification is an excellent substitute. The vessel itself, depending on the flag, will have to be legally documented to charter. Especially if it’s a US flagged vessel and the hull is built in the US, it will need Coastwise and Registry endorsements on the USCG documentation. Charter insurance, as opposed to recreational insurance is also a must, is more difficult to obtain and is more expensive. Non-US built vessels may apply to MARAD (www.marad.dot.gov/) for a waiver that enables them to charter in US waters. Charter management, promotion and marketingNext on the list is to look for a Clearing House or a Management Company that will accept your boat, these terms can be synonymous but there are some differences. For examples of professional Clearing Houses and Management Companies, please visit www.yachtcollection.com; www.flagshipvi.com. A Clearing House basically holds the boat’s calendar, lists your boat on its website as well as on recognized industry databases, distributes hard copy brochures, and generally acts as a secretarial service while your boat is out on charter. A Management Company performs all the above and additionally may offer promotional and marketing services, manage your boat, perform maintenance, hire a crew on your behalf, provision for charter, and many other functions not offered or performed by Clearing Houses. You can expect to pay a monthly fee and/or a percentage of the value of the charter to the Clearing House. Your own charter boat web pageYou should then create two web-sites for your boat. Both sites can be identical and provide nice pictures of people having a great time on your boat, menu selections, testimonials, packages, special offers and a very basic spec sheet. The nicer the pictures, the more chance you have of getting customers. The difference between the two sites is that one will have your contact information and the other will be anonymous or “broker-friendly”. This broker-friendly site is important so that yacht charter brokers can point their customers to your boat web-site without the fear of you “stealing” their customer. Brokers have a reputation, not entirely undeserved, of being somewhat paranoid anyway. More on this later. If your boat is pretty large, you may wish to take the additional step of creating a hard-copy full color brochure. This is usually a pretty expensive undertaking and can only be justified if you are seriously planning to charter more than 20 weeks a year or if you own a particularly luxurious vessel. Hard-copy brochures are a must for Mega-Yachts but are slowly giving way to the ubiquitous and easier to manage electronic or e-brochures. OK, let’s stop for a minute to breathe. Take a step back….. Where are your charter customers going to actually come from? They will come from the following sources: 1.) From Charter Brokers. Let’s talk about charter brokers for a minute. This is the next link in the marketing chain. Charter Brokers are like a cross between travel agents and mortgage brokers. There are probably 400 to 600 active brokers worldwide. They have their own marketing networks, do their own advertising, for example on Yacht World, (www.yachtworld.com), have existing customers that trust them, have access to all major databases and clearing houses and management companies. When a broker gets an inquiry, he or she will either go to an industry database, like Nemesis Marketing, (www.centralyachtagent.com) or Charter Index, (www.charterindex.com) or MYBA (www.mybamembers.com) , or, they may go directly to a Clearing House or Management Company if they have an immediate idea of what boat would be suitable. You may note that the Broker nearly always goes to the Clearing House or Management Company, and rarely to the boat directly until the later stages. This is because the Clearing Houses carry the boats calendars and have the availability at their fingertips. Brokers don’t like to spend time and money calling a dozen boats, most of which are out on charter anyway. You will pay the broker 15 percent to 20 percent sales commission depending on the circumstances so you must price your charters accordingly – look at your competition and also bear in mind that there are brokerage fees and clearing house expenses to pay. Clearly, if you don’t use a broker, you “save” 15 to 20 percent so you should maximize the number of direct charters to try and get a nice “mix” that will fit your particular charter business. Many people ask us how many charters to expect each year. As with all businesses, there is a ramp-up. The first year you can possibly expect 5 to 6 charters. The second year, perhaps 10 to 12, and after a few years, when your boat and crew are well known to the brokerage community and you have a number of repeat customers, you can achieve up to, perhaps between 25 and 30 charters a year. This is very exhausting however and many boats prefer to remain at the 20 to 25 level. All the above will appear to be very daunting, but it pays to keep everything straight and once you have hooked up with a good Clearing House or Management Company you’ll find them to be an excellent source of advise. About the Author: Tony King offers readers the opportunity to read more articles on Yachting Sailing Boating at http://www.boatmiami.com/resources/articlesindex.htm or for further information and resources to visit http://www.boatmiami.com, www.boatbvi.com Source: www.boatmiami.com Further ReadingDepartment of State's Travel advice - crucial information for your safety |
