The Chinese style of yachts

The country’s luxury boating market has potential but comes with some unique traits.

A boat show at the port in the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian, where customers have different requirements than westerners. Johannes Eisele / AFP

Chinese yacht buyers want a round table to eat at, a karaoke machine, a mah-jong table and more shade on their vessels.

And boat makers are willing to accommodate them, given the size of the potential market.

Despite its long coastline and 1.35 billion-member population – including thousands of multimillionaires – China has only an estimated 3,000 pleasure boats, and yachting remains a niche pastime.

In contrast, the United States is said to have one watercraft, albeit including small boats, for every 15 inhabitants.

With a fortune made in Chinese finance, Li Wang already has six cars including a Bentley and a Porsche, and his eye on his next multimillionaires’ toy: a boat. He epitomises the Chinese buyers being targeted by the world’s yacht builders, whose vessels can cost as much as US$100m, taxes not included.

“I only know a little about yachts at the moment,” acknowledged the 27-year-old, strolling in golden sunglasses among the sailboats, catamarans and motor cruisers lining the jetties at a boat show in Dalian.

“It’s not a big deal. Buying a yacht is on my schedule.”

Traugott Kaminski, the head of China operations for Italian yachtmaker Sanlorenzo, brought two yachts to China in 2003.

“There were no regulations, no port, no yachting culture,” he said, and even now the firm still has to educate first-time buyers.

But others are “sophisticated customers who know what they want”.

“Think about the car industry. Ten or 15 years ago nobody expected China would become the biggest market worldwide, and the same thing will happen to the yachting industry,” he went on.

In another parallel with the global vehicle business, two major European yachtbuilders, Sunseeker of Britain and Italy’s Ferretti, have been bought by Chinese firms in recent years.

Several thousand visitors attended the event in Dalian, on the shores of the Yellow Sea, and despite the constraints of 43 per cent import taxes, limits on infrastructure, and bitter northern winters, organisers said that “on-site sales occurred”.

Chinese buyers have different requirements to westerners, explained Mr Kaminski.

“In Europe you will use the boat for a two- or three-week cruise,” explained Mr Kaminski. “In China you are using it for a day cruise, so you don’t need so many cabins, you need a big spa, you need entertainment space.”

In the West, the captain and crew are often seen as part of the family. Not so in China, where the wheelhouse and kitchen need to be separate.

Marco Valle, the sales director for Azimut, one of the world’s major yachtbuilders, remembers the first yacht he sold in China, about a decade ago, to a rich Shanghai businessman.

The client asked if it could be delivered without an engine, as he intended to keep it moored to show off to his contacts.

There are other contrasts.

“The market is really working in reverse,” said Paul Blanc, Asia-Pacific director for the boatbuilder Jeanneau, which is targeting China’s upper-middle classes with boats from five to 25 metres, starting from 1.5m yuan (Dh895,000).

“In China we’re starting with big boats and the market is going to expand to smaller sizes,” he said. “In Europe it is the other way round – people start with small boats and as they gain more experience and money they buy bigger and bigger ones.”

Growth has been rapid, says Mr Blanc, but along with the import taxes another major obstacle is a near total absence of public marinas, so almost all the infrastructure is run by elite private yacht clubs, with memberships costing 700,000 to 1m yuan.

Such sums are irrelevant to the buyers of superyachts, says Jona Kan, the sales director for Silver Yachts, which specialises in aluminium-hulled vessels more than 70 metres long.

His firm has only ever sold three ships – two to Middle Eastern buyers and one in the US – but with prices confidential it is still enough to sustain the business.

Now he is looking for an Asian customer.

“Our yachts will be bought by modern Chinese who already have been to all the best hotels in the world and now want something special to go to places where nobody has been, and with their own accommodation,” he said.

There was a hiccup in demand for yachts last year in the face of a much-publicised austerity and anti-corruption drive by the Chinese president Xi Jinping, several vendors said.

But Mr Kan is targeting customers in a different league – so rich that their money is clean.

“Their wealth is public and is acknowledged by the government,” he said.

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