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How much is dedicated yacht support worth?

3K views 23 replies 14 participants last post by  RobGallagher 
#1 ·
Dear All,

As a current leisure sailor who enjoys using my yacht to explore and travel from place to place every summer
I've been asked by a good friend of mine to help gather some feedback on a business he's developing specifically to support yacht owners/captains/sailors with a similar interest.

His concept is to provide yacht owners, sailors, captains etc with a support service through the medium of a concierge that can be reached 24/7/365. The concierge works as a central hub between an international and trusted network of service providers all over the world and the customer. (This marine network has been build over 30 years in the industry). It would ultimately be like having an assistant that knows everyone, everywhere.

As a member you can call with any request, such as finding a berth, a hostess, a cleaner, fuel, a mechanic, to requesting a car be waiting at the marina, a hotel or restaurant booking, tickets to a show, or even just finding out the best places to visit during your stay. The concierge would then activate the relevant service providers and manage everything on the members behalf, relieving them of the stress/time of searching.

So what I would like to find out is...

1, Would you personally see a benefit in having something like this?
(Y/N)

2, What price would you expect to pay for membership an all inclusive concierge per month? €50 - €100 - €200??

3, Would you be kind enough to provide an example of a time when this sort of service would have been useful to you?

If you can include the boat you own/sail and where you keep it, within your answer, I would be most grateful.

Thank you so very much in advance.
 
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#2 ·
Sure, find me the best Phad Thai in Pak Bara...your concierge wouldn't have a clew. Book me a haul out deep up a river in Chebilang, advise me on the tides too, not going to happen.
 
#6 ·
As described in my initial post, it acts as a central hub for a global network of service providers, ultimately acting as an assistant to the yacht owner/sailor and giving them back the freedom of time and convenience. To give you a better understanding of how the service works i should explain that this business's back office already provide a concierge service to over 90+ banks and credit card companies and have over 1 million members.

As an American Express customer you would receive an international concierge as part of the service. American express have simply "white Labelled" an established and dedicated concierge service and re-branded it as their own. My friends concept has done exactly the same (aka re-branded an existing, established, and trusted concierge) and added his international marine network to the service. There will be areas that are less covered than others, of course, but if you were stuck up a river in Chebilang with no idea of the tides and in desperate need of a Phad thai the concierge would take the time to do the research, make the calls, and find out the answers for you, aka saving you time.

Regards
 
#4 ·
Sounds more like a service for the more upper-crust cruisers. Most cruisers do not have that large of a cruising budget. They are very resourceful and rely on each other for such things. You may want to just Google this business model as I am thinking the folks with the granite counter tops in their boats already have this service provided for them.
 
#11 ·
Folks hire boat managers all the time. There is more than one at our marina alone. For the thousands of folks, who keep a boat in the Caribbean only to visit a few weeks a year, it's virtually a necessity.

The part that is lacking from this offering is the value of showing up in person. Having someone actually lay eyes on your boat, while you're away, to be sure all is well. Much more important and valuable is to actually be present for maintenance, not just refer a good shop. The absentee owner doesn't always get the best service, response time or quality. In fact, I maintain they are frequently ripped off. Just having an educated consumer, in the form of a boat manager that negotiates what needs to be done would be tremendous. Again, this requires eyes on the situation for the manager to know. This has value.

The dial up concierge is losing ground to technology every day. It has a place in the uber wealthy crowd, who truly work too much or pack too much leisure into their lives or both. No time to plan.
 
#13 ·
The part that is lacking from this offering is the value of showing up in person. Having someone actually lay eyes on your boat, while you're away, to be sure all is well. Much more important and valuable is to actually be present for maintenance, not just refer a good shop. The absentee owner doesn't always get the best service, response time or quality.
Bingo.

I do some yacht management.

I recently picked up a boat that has been on the hard for a year and a half. He had a splash date that a lot of other things were dependent upon. In three weeks I saved him my fee, got him in the water on time, and got trades people on board by going and sitting in their offices. Try doing that from an international call center somewhere.

"No, we don't need a new toilet. We need a rebuild kit."

"No you can't put the Racors there or we won't be able to reach the watermaker."

"Yes, we do need a new house bank, but that price is way out of line. Match this price or we'll go elsewhere."
 
#14 ·
I know a guy that has been working part time building up a yacht management business. His business plan was a little bit like you describe, but the way it worked out was a little bit more hands on. He keeps the boats clean, he books mechanics, haul out, shrink wrapping and even offers skipper services.

He focuses his marketing on wealthy clients.

What you are describing, sounds a little bit more like what I would describe as a yacht agent, similar to a shipping agent. My concern with your business model is, in the age of internet and Active Captain, even wealthy sailors may not be willing to pay for this service, even Donald Trump and Lindsay Lohan can use Google from their iPhones, as easily as call their agent.

I don't think your concept of yacht management is completely flawed, but it might need some tweaking. In the information age, people need doers more than information management services in my opinion, especially wealthy educated people.
 
#17 ·
I know a guy that has been working part time building up a yacht management business. His business plan was a little bit like you describe, but the way it worked out was a little bit more hands on. He keeps the boats clean, he books mechanics, haul out, shrink wrapping and even offers skipper services.
I agree. Mine does also.

The point I was attempting to make is that you have to be there. Yacht management is attractive, especially to remote or otherwise absent owners because you are there. Workers are more likely to show up if they know someone will meet them. They will be more efficient and cleaner also.

For work of substance there is still shopping to do. I certainly have businesses I always get a bid from, and some I won't go near, but the work is in the interests of the client so if I just call one company (with a few rare exceptions) I am not protecting those interests.

He focuses his marketing on wealthy clients.
I focus on high end brokers. I find they can get frustrated by support calls and are happy to shift the work to someone else and the costs to the owner. *grin*

Oddly enough my delivery work, communications/electronics, and yacht management have a lot of synergy.

Many small tasks are better done by me than a contractor - it may take me less time to just do it than to manage it. Of course I take pictures of all the work.
 
#15 ·
I can appreciate the concept. I would be paying a company to deal with some busy-work associated with owning and operating a super yacht such as mine... Oh, wait a minute, I just bought tiles for my kitchen floor that cost more than my f***ing boat is worth. Pass.
 
#20 ·
Caberg has it about right. Within cell phone or internet service you can find out just about anything you want before entering a new port. Once there, locals will typically offer local knowledge, advice and guidance for free

Right now, if you want to make a reservation at a restaurant, you can go to "open table', need a ride, call uber or a cab, most yacht clubs will know who to refer you to for service and marinas will often provide you with the service. Need ticket to the theater or a game, use ticketmaster, stub hub et al. Folks here argue about whether or not they should tip their waiter or the charter captain; I don't see them paying a monthly fee for a service to book a table at a restaurant or rent a car for them, for a service they may only utilize occasionally.

On the other hand, if you managed to somehow get the service providers to pay you a commission on the business you sent their way, making the service free to the customer, there might be a boutique market for a centralized concierge. However, even if you were to get providers to pay you for referrals, there will be those that won't. So theoretically, the best restaurant in town may decide that you can't boost their business sufficiently, and then you wouldn't steer your client to them. You'd have to convince all the best service providers in town that you had a substantial list of potential clients for them to buy in. Open table, for instance, already charges fees to their restaurant partners, it's unlikely that the restaurant would pay another referral business on top of that.

I think I understand what you're after, but I don't believe you'll find it here. Many of the folks here travel to many of the same spots, share info freely, and are already familiar with the many of the local services. They also subscribe to active captain, purchase waterway guides etc.

I forget which island it was, but one of them in the BVI, had a wash and fold service. drop your laundry off, hit the beach, or go to lunch, and pick it up on the way back, I thought that was a great deal. I for one don't want to spend my vacation washing and folding towels and laundry.
 
#22 · (Edited)
The above caused me to think of another example of why an international concierge may be a challenge with regards to local knowledge.

It made me think of my local CG MCTS (Marine Control and Traffic Services). I know these guys reasonably well because in addition to working with them from a traffic control and various SAR operations perspective over the radio, I have also worked out of the Prescott base quite a bit and I keep my pleasure craft in Prescott. Some I have known socially. These folks, generally speaking are intelligent, well trained professionals.

The area covered by this MCTS station really isn't that big. It goes from Cornwall on the St Lawrence to Font Hill in the Niagara Peninsula and North to Orillia along the Trent Severn Canal roughly 14000 square miles ish.

I frequently hear radio calls, usually pan pans or distress calls from inexperienced pleasure boaters referencing obscure land marks to give their positions followed by a considerable pause on the MCTS side while the operator tries to figure out where the heck the folks are talking about. Sure they can triangulate, but frequently, the location is decoded by a boater with intimate local knowledge in the immediate vicinity of the distressed vessel.

So if intelligent, well trained MCTS operators with federal government salaries can't have an intimate knowledge of every harbour, port and connecting canal to a little puddle like Lake Ontario, how would this be handled on an international scale?

Even myself, I consider to have reasonably good local knowledge of Lake Ontario and the St Lawrence, I have provided reviews on Active Captain of 48 marinas, ports, anchorages and facilities, mostly on Lake Ontario and the St Lawrence which is only a small fraction of the facilities available in this region.

How would your project achieve an adequate level of local knowledge without extensive use of crowd sourcing resources that are already in place?
 
#24 ·
Both my overpriced Chase/United and EMX/Delta cards offer all kinds of crap (I keep them simply for the miles). The marketing package that United sends me every year is very impressive. I would have to be a baboon to call them up rather than simply find someone who speaks a bit of English or, better yet, use google, before wasting time with a "phone concierge".

Yes they market it like there is some CIA agent in a control room staring down at you from an intel satellite as a black car speeds in your direction with your lost Rolex and then off to a some secret gem hotel that doesn't exist on the internet. Newsflash here...That girl in India faking a southern accent is using google.

It's not that it's a horrible idea, people might see it as an added bonus to sway them into some sore of membership. It's just that you would need someone to pay for it by bundling it in a membership package. Something people already use, or are on the fence about paying for, like insurance or a towing service.

As stated above, people with the money, but not the time, hire a captain or a yacht manager who works directly with them and follows up on the services. The follow up can be more time consuming than the rest of the process.

Sure some online talking head can google me a shrink wrap guy in Maine. Who is going to climb the ladder and see that the job was done properly? Not some guy at the other end of a telephone.

By bundling it you find some idiot in the marketing department of another company who knows nothing about yacht management to pay for it.
 
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