How intelligent is your business?
Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine.
PETER SONDERGAARD, GARTNER, INC.
Introduction
For the past 30+ years, The Superyacht Group has been reporting, analysing and monitoring the large-yacht sector (yachts over 30 metres l.o.a.), including the new build, refit, marinas, migration, OPEX, CAPEX, brokerage, ownership, wealth and supply chain sectors. Our two media channels, The Superyacht Report & SuperyachtNews.com, our CRM database system and our in-house proprietary market intelligence tools provide access to every layer of the industry in order to understand the decision-making process, the customer behaviour and the demands of the market.
Our expert consultants, editors, research teams and market analysts have been studying the industry for the past three decades, and this unrivalled knowledge allow us to analyse, forecast and interrogate the market in the same way that a Deloitte, McKinsey or Boston Consulting Group would do for other market segments. Over the past 20 years, since we launched our Strategic Consulting division, we have delivered hundreds of consultancy reports to the major builders, marina owners, manufacturers, brokerage houses, owners, family offices, government bodies and tourist boards, as well as private banks, private equity groups and investors. The following guide will share with you some of the questions we have answered or can answer for you. We look forward to working with you,
Martin H. Redmayne, Chairman and Specialist Market Consultant
How Big is
the market?
This is one of the key questions we are often asked by all categories of clients, as there is so much data available, but it is often presented without intelligence. Yes, there are several sources of superyacht data floating around the market, as the source is relatively straightforward. It’s how you analyse, segment and understand the data that is so critical – in order to really understand how big your market really is.
Fleet size by year
1900 - 1989 1,216
1990 - 1999 782
2000 - 2009 1,866
2010 - 2019 1,675
2020 - 2023 700 2024 49 6,288
How critical is fleet data?
6200+ SUPERYACHTS
It’s important to know how many yachts there are in the market and to know who built what and where they cruise, but we believe that there is more important data that needs to be analysed for investors and CEOs. Yacht operating budgets and annual owner, guest and crew spend, when integrated into the fleet numbers, can give a marina operator, regional tourist board or local government real insight into what impact a migrating fleet will have. Knowing how big the fleet is OK, but knowing how much the fleet may invest if you attract a greater percentage to your region is fundamental.
SUPERYACHTS
Can you forecast accurately?
Once you have a clear picture of the fleet and its economic and migration patterns, the most important topic for an investor or CEO is the future. Being able to project your numbers, forecast growth and have a better understanding of what the market is doing is a key element of good consultancy. Over the past ten years, we have delivered not only market-leading forecasts of the new-build and refit sectors, but also reports and trends to banks, investors and leading brands, all of whom want to have a better idea of where we’re heading. Our market analysts have built algorithms that add a multitude of factors and trends or order to build a forecast model that our clients can rely on.
Who is your next customer?
For the past 30 years, the market has been sustained by a list of serial yacht owners and investors, many of which have ended up as yacht builders by default. In a market that is made up of a couple of thousand UHNWIs, with a potential market of 400,000 UHNWIs, the future of our market depends on identifying and understand the customer of the future and, more importantly, their understanding and affinity with our unique industry. Being able to interview, interrogate and analyse customer behaviour has become a core proposition of our consultancy.
What do they really think?
There are so many different types of customer, beyond the obvious UHNWIs, Captains, Engineers, Family Offices, Yacht Managers, Technical Directors, Head of Procurement, Designers and many more. Qualitative and quantitative research is a core foundation of many of our consultancy projects in order to help a client understand what their target customer and their potential new customer, understands, thinks and needs. These have often led to round tables and focus groups so a client can engage and understand what they think and perhaps how the customer wants their supplier to change or adapt.
Again, understanding the customer is a core proposition within our consultancy and this can be as focused and nuanced as understanding their decisionmaking process, cycle and chain of command. If you know who makes the decisions and who has control of the budgets, this can improve your efficiency in targeting and engaging your customer. So if you’re trying to sell tenders to yachts over 75 metres and you know that there are 10 competitors and only 20+ projects a year, you can improve your opportunity and ROI by understand who needs to know what, by when.
How do they make decisions?
Are your competitors growing?
For some of the biggest shipyards in the market, we have created several competitor studies in order to understand how they are performing as a builder, but perhaps the most interesting analysis is to understand why they are growing in comparison to you. S, in addition to analysing order books and build trends, we study how customers and influencers choose shipyards, to better understand the drivers for growth and perhaps the barriers too. It’s not just a matter of whether a competitor is growing, it’s also a case of how, why and what is making them grow. This applies to all companies.
With over 400,000 UHNWIs across the globe, many of whom are highly mobile and incredibly busy, trying to forecast where the next new market will evolve or understand how new markets can be built and develop is a key element of our consultancy. Yes, we are a relatively small industry and have very clear hot spots of activity, but there are always new opportunities emerging, and as regional governments and investors look to attract the superyacht sector to their locale being able to identify and analyse their potential becomes a powerful and valuable strategy.
Where are the new markets?
What do captains
need?
Imagine if you could ask 200 Captains of yachts above 40 metres their opinion on a particular subject or perhaps investigate whether your product or service provides exactly what they need, this unique insight can support any brand or marketing strategy and give a sales team confidence and clarity of the customer’s needs. So whether it’s a Captain or any other type of decision-maker or influencer, our team can interrogate with confidence and in confidence to find out exactly what they really need. If you have ever wanted to ask a Captain something, but know that their answer would be sanitised, our researchers’ relationships with the market allow us to ask really powerful questions and deliver candid and in-depth insights.
Over the past 20 years we have worked with all of the major marina groups and delivered reports to over 75 new marinas or regional governments in order to validate or analyse the true potential of a marina upgrade, reconfiguration or a brand-new development. By interrogating and analysing migration patterns, understanding the appetite of Captains and Owners and forecasting the growth of the region as a cruising ground or home port, we have been able to support investors and developers when it comes to ensuring that a marina will work both financially and operationally.
Will
your new marina work?
Does your new product fit the future?
When a company, supplier or manufacturer thinks about a product upgrade or brand-new innovation, in all cases it makes sense to test the product with customer focus groups and qualitative research, to validate the ideas and thinking behind your latest great idea. But the sooner you do this research, the more input you can build into the product before it goes to market, especially if the Focus Group can end up being part of the product development process. Over the years, we have helped builders, designers, equipment manufacturers, service companies and IT businesses understand their customer and to explore whether the customer really wants this or that feature or new gizmo.
About ten years ago a lawyer asked a question on behalf of an Owner, “Can you help us validate that the builders we are talking to are able to deliver?”. This has triggered a whole range of Owner-focused projects that allow our team to work impartially and independently in order to provide due diligence and accurate intelligence so a buyer or Owner can make a decision with additional confidence, rather than just taking guidance or advice from an advisor or intermediary who may have a personal bias or interest. Owners don’t invest $50 million to $100 million dollars in a new company without independent expert due diligence; the same should apply to Owners and investors in the yacht market.
How can I compare builders impartially?
Which yacht makes sense?
Similarly, to the due diligence topic, we have completed studies for Owners on the yacht market to support their decision-making process, especially if they are relatively new to the market. By presenting the facts and figures, a buyer can better understand the market landscape, the operating budgets, the maintenance programme, the depreciation curves and whether buying old or new makes the best investment. There are lots of experts in the market that give good advice to buyers and plenty who give bad advice too; the problem clients have today is who is giving what. Therefore our team is able to give independent advice in addition to what they already have.
In the past 15 years, we have not only seen IPOs, market listings and exits, but we have also witnessed new investors coming into the market with great expectations and, in some cases, unrealistic projections. This has allowed some investors to come and go very quickly and some listings have failed dramatically, tarnishing our market’s reputations with the institutions and banks. While many of the big consulting firms have great financial models and better M&A and investor experience, we have been called into action to validate and challenge their inputs and models, making sure the investors understand what they need to know and add a sense of realism and balance to the books.
What do investors need to know?
Since 1992, The Superyacht Group and our two flagship media channels have become the most valuable and respected media channels in the sector. We describe ourselves as the ‘Financial Times’ and ‘The Economist’ of superyachting, with a powerful and unique combination of intelligent journalism, smart insights, trusted intelligence and candid opinions.
With two slogans – “A Report Worth Reading” and “We Don’t Do Click Bait” – we are read and are referred to by the market’s leading decision-makers and influencers, because they understand our core values and recognise our strengths as one of the most expert teams in the sector, with decades of experience. We are not focused on reaching everyone in the market or writing content that is designed to generate the highest number of clicks, but we are focused on making sure the most important people in the industry, Owners, Captains, Advisors, Influencers and the C-Suite network, all read and respect our channels.
Over the past 30 years we have 200 clients with specific
DAMEN YACHTING – BOERO – AKZONOBEL – MB’92 –
– CLYDE & CO – CAMPER & NICHOLSONS – VRIPACK
GC – DUBAI TOURISM – PORTO MONTENEGRO – AL SEER
MCKINSEY – CBRE – BARDEX CORPORATION – BAGLIETTO
HARBOUR – PORTO MIRABELLO – ACQUERA – IYC -
LLOYD’S REGISTER – RED ENSIGN GROUP – ISLAND
– LUIZ DE BASTO - NAUTICAL STRUCTURES – OCEANCO
ROLAND BERGER – QINVEST – PENINSULA PETROLEUM
SEA AUTHORITY – NEOM – OLESINSKI – WREDE - PALUMBO
– BERMUDA TOURISM – KNIGHT FRANK – BALEARIC
– AMICO – FINANCIAL INVESTOR PROJECTS IN PANAMA
HONG KONG – MEXICO – THE MALDIVES – THE
have worked with more than specific consultancy projects
DELOITTE – PORT DE MARSEILLE – TAHITI TOURISM
- PENDENNIS – FEADSHIP – PORT OF VENICE – LIST
SEER MARINE – P&O MARINAS – MONACO MARINE –
BAGLIETTO – MARINA PORT VELL – FRASER – CHRISTOPHE
CRESTRON – HOLLAND YACHTING GROUP - DNV –
GLOBAL YACHTING – LURSSEN – JOTUN – INMARSAT
OCEANCO – SEVENSTAR – SF MARINAS – ROLLS-ROYCE –
PETROLEUM – RHONE TRUST – OCIBAR – WINCH DESIGN – RED
PALUMBO – CVC CAPITAL – GYG GROUP – HEESEN YACHTS
BALEARIC MARINE CLUSTER – BNP PARIBAS – SANLORENZO
PANAMA – PUERTO RICO – ANGUILLA – PHILIPPINES –
THE RED SEA – ABU DHABI – DUBAI - GIBRALTAR