COMMENT
Get the show off the road
H
ave we reached the end of the road for the old-style yacht show? Europeans have been spared the
need to attend yacht shows for 24 months or more and as this year’s boat show season ramps up for what organisers hope will be a bumper profit making affair, I must ask myself, do we really want to carry on with the same old, same old? Or is it time to look afresh and start again? This time, making it work well for all three parties involved instead of just the one.
For any international show to be successful, those three parties: the organisers, the exhibitors and the attendees all need to be happy with the end result. The build-up to the cancellation of the 2020 Monaco Yacht Show showed cracks and while Covid 19 shouldered the blame and took the credit for the show’s cancellation the fact is the exhibitors were far from happy with the way things were shaping up.
The problem is not confined to just the Cannes Yachting Festival, the Genoa Boat Show and the Monaco Yacht Show. Nor is it restricted to just the superyacht industry. The Frankfurt Motor Show, for decades a demonstration of German post war automotive industrial might, was the launch platform for many of the world’s top models. Now it is dead. Geneva, Europe’s premier motor show, has been cancelled for the past two years and there are no guarantees about how it might look in 2022.
The vast exhibition halls of Frankfurt is where, in years gone by, the original Goggomobil and Porsche 911 made their world debuts. The show was the launchpads for the Ford Granada, the VW Golf and most recently the new Defender from Jaguar Land Rover. Automotive companies have for years been complaining that it is difficult to justify the multimillion-euro expenditure the show demands. They have argued why endure all the hassle and expense of logistics and
Michael Howorth wonders whether this is the end of the road for the boat show as we know it
setup just for the privilege of trying to grab the attention of the visitor when your rivals are endeavouring to do exactly the same thing for the same person at the same time.
Maybe this is why, during the covid invoked lock downs, one Italian production boat builder caught on to the clever idea that it was better to hire out an entire marina, fill the berths with examples of each and every boat they produced and then ship-in carefully selected and pre-vetted potential customers in very small groups to enjoy the hospitality and the exclusive opportunity of seeing the boats without the tyre kickers getting in on the act. The fact that this tactic also ensured the press or more importantly their rivals never got to see the prototypes and the new launches were an added bonus.
SYBAss and LYBRA were at the forefront of dissenters in the summer of 2020 when the future of that year’s MYS was in doubt. Jointly they proclaimed that the superyacht industry faces a new environment going forward. Neither wanted to be continually investing significant sums into an event that looks likely to provide an ever lessening of their ROI with an organiser that has consistently refused to listen to the voices of its most important players – the exhibitors.
SYBAss represents 21 of the world’s largest and most productive superyacht building brands and LYBRA, is an association of the eight largest international yacht brokerage houses.
Back then the associations suggested to the organisers of the MYS that now was the time for all parties to: “Sit around the table and work out what we should be doing in the future.” We are told, that there were substantial conversations between all parties - well, let’s wait and see.
ONBOARD | SUMMER 2021 | 7
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