Guest Columnist Reanna Wang: Simpson Yacht charter’s client-based strategies

Today’s Simpson charter department consists mostly of three components, (1) Phuket-based bareboat and crewed charters, (2) running the central agency for large crewed Lagoons in Asia, and (3) superyacht charters. The Phuket base is operated by a subsidiary company, Simpson Yacht Charter (SYC), launched in 2013 to meet requests from yacht owners who purchased Lagoons from Simpson Marine.

Many of them live and work in neighboring Asian cities such as Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong… They put their boats into a Phuket fleet, so that they can enjoy yachting holidays sailing around Andaman Sea isles, while at other times chartering them out to earn a profit, and exponentially grow the Phuket charter industry.

SYC is entrusted to take care of each boat’s routine maintenance and also to manage all marketing and sales of the owners’ charter bookings.

In the last five years, SYC has established its reputation among global charter agents as a Phuket boutique operator that provides well-maintained charter boats and highly personalised services.

During the same period, yacht owners who entrusted their yachts to SYC have been very pleased that their vessels have retained a high market value, and remained in good condition. Under the Simpson system, their own holiday plans aboard their boats are not restricted to non-prime charter seasons, unlike other charter operators, and last but by no means least, the charter profits, after deducting all running costs, are very healthy.

Today, SYC has a small but growing fleet of catamarans from 42 to 52 feet, offering bareboat and crewed yacht charters in the Andaman Islands.

Being Lagoon’s exclusive dealer, more and more Lagoon owners have started to appoint SYC as Central Agent (CA) for chartering their large luxury crewed vessels.

Most of these Lagoons have fixed crew, and home ports in Asia, such as Hong Kong, Vietnam and Malaysia. A few owners even start their charter planning from the shipyard launch in Bordeaux. After taking delivery, they make seasonal stops with their yachts in popular charter destinations such as the Western Med, Caribbean, and then cruise through the Pacific islands, with charters being booked on each leg, all the way back to Asia.

SYC is currently the charter CA for a Lagoon 560, Lagoon 620, and even for the worldwide debut of the only Lagoon Seventy 7 available for charter. 2018 will certainly see a new era in SYC’s CA list.

Superyacht charters are a different story. With 35 years history in Asia, Simpson Marine has accumulated an invaluable Asian HNWI customer database, which formed our solid foundation for launching the superyacht charter business of the Group.

By introducing luxury yachting lifestyles, every year we receive increasing inquiries for superyacht charters from our Asian customers. We successfully handled several superyacht charters in the past year, and this will become one of SYC’s focal points of development in 2018.

Personally I have nearly ten years yachting experience in Asia, and realised straight away that it would be a long haul as people got used to luxury yachting lifestyles. Yachting charters are one of the best ways to ignite interest, and thus enable the whole industry to thrive.

I thus joined the big Simpson family, with a mission to further drive the charter department into a strategic component of the Group.

It has been one of my priorities to translate SYC’s successful charter yacht management track records into factual data that can be easily explained to more of Simpson Marine’s yacht owners, so that these clients can understand and benefit from joining our charter management programme.

More examples of Simpson Yacht Charter management appear in the Charter Focus in this issue.

For more information about Simpson Marine and yacht charter, please visit www.simpsonyachtcharter.com or contact Reanna Wang at [email protected].

*** This article is republished from Issue 43 of Yacht Style.