The Monaco Yacht Show has long ago established itself as the number-one superyacht event worldwide, but the organisers of this year’s event are not resting on their laurels and are striving to make it even more successful.
Johan Pizzardini, the show’s long-serving communications and media manager, holds a view shared by many in the industry that top-end yachting needs to attract new blood.
He said last week: “At the moment, the industry depends on existing clientele, so they participate in the MYS and they believe in the MYS. We have the responsibility to upgrade the show and make it a fantastic platform – a superyacht hub – for professionals to come to, while bringing new prospects to Monaco who wish to either charter or buy a yacht.”
In order to reach out to a wider audience, the MYS has been holding social events in London and New York with target UHNWIs in order, hopefully, to entice them into the world of super yachts.
“If out of the 50 people that we met in New York or London, 10 would come to Monaco at the end of September and then there are three or five people that want to buy or charter a yacht, I would say mission accomplished,” Mr Pizzardini said.
This outreach programme is so well organised it’s been given its own name, the Sapphire Experience. Interested parities are invited to Monaco to see that it’s becoming a super yacht hub in the hope they become enamoured of the yachting world and later either charter or buy a yacht.
Meanwhile the Monaco Yacht Summit – held during the Yacht Show, this year from September 27-30 – will continue to attract yachting professionals with the Monaco Yacht Club as a perfect venue and backdrop.
France’s winemakers claim that this year’s grape harvest will be the worst on record. Late frosts throughout the wine-growing regions will result in a 17 percent drop in quantities to 37.6 million hectolitres, the agriculture ministry has said, even lower than the disastrous 1991 harvest, a cataclysmic event still very well remembered.
Lorre White is an international luxury market expert and luxury media personality “The Luxury Guru”, Owner of White Light Consulting, Luxury blog