Regattas and their impact on yachting

by Pimex - Sail-World on 21 Feb 2006 The Asian Regatta circuit has boomed over the last few years. Andy Dowden from Image Asia convened an industry seminar on Regatta and their impact on yachting at the very successful PIMEX 2005 in Phuket, in early December. The economic benefits of regattas, the importance of charter fleets, the need for high quality race management and the fact that owners have more choice are all factors that will decide which regatta grow and which will shrink. The full transcript of the seminar follows..

Andy Dowden from Image Asia, the Organisers of PIMEX opened the proceedings.

Today’s seminar will consider the inter-relationship between regattas which are coming around more and more often in our region and worldwide and the marine industry, which the PIMEX show is all about, the marine industry which represents products, boats, equipment, marinas, and of course the people who operate charters and are generally involved in marine tourism.

Across Asia there has been a ‘spurt of growth’ in regattas over the last four or five years and it remains to be seen whether they continue to grow.

We’ve bought along today people who are involved in those regattas, in different ways, at different levels, or as media covering them.

On the far left is Captain Marty Rijkuris who has been reporting on Asian regattas via his AsianYachting.com site for five years.

On his right is Rob Kothe from Australia who is the founder of Sail-World.com, and his large international sailing website is involved in many regattas, not just in the region but worldwide.

On my immediate left is Simon James. He has just come off the water as ‘Mr. Racing’ (the Regatta Director) for the Kings Cup. More importantly for this discussion, Simon is the Regional Sales and Marketing guy for Sunsail, which is the biggest charter company in the world.

I would like to start off by asking Captain Marty to give us an overview of how the media, and how he in particular, looks at the regional regatta scene and how it has its impact on our industry, the marine industry.

Marty: Well my involvement in the last five years has mainly been in the coverage of regattas. Five years ago we only had four or five regattas and now we have over twenty, so it has been a rapid growth industry.

And in a lot of the places where regattas are held these days they promote the area - tourism wise, industry wise, or marina wise.

With the spurt of regattas about three years ago we established a calendar of regattas and we are contacted a lot by potential organisers wanting to have a regatta in a region.

Looking at regattas in places like Langkawi, Koh Samui and Phuket, all of these regattas are in areas where there are plenty of boats located already, plus a lot of visiting boats.

And they can start a regatta with 20 or 30 local boats.

In other areas, all wanting to have regattas, the first question I ask is ‘Do you have any boats?’ And a lot of them say no.

So all the regattas are relying on boats to come to do the regatta and to just ‘miraculously appear’. I recommend to potential organisers that they don’t have a regatta unless they go out and buy some boats or can guarantee that there will be at least ten boats there.

I think probably by now, we have the area covered well enough from both a tourism point of view and a industry point of view for regattas, provided that they are staged in a reasonable program for boats wanting to go to them and allowing enough time to get between regattas.

It has become a wonderful tool for the tourism industry and the locals, to conduct a regatta to promote their region. It is working out quite well. At the King’s Cup, a representative mentioned that it the regatta let the world know that Phuket is back in business.

Andy: Thanks Marty, Marty is very much involved in the Asian region regattas and has been for a long time.

Rob Kothe is Australian based and they have their own circuit of regattas down there, so I will ask Rob how the regatta scene in Asia compares to the regattas in Australia and in other parts of the world.

Kothe: Thank you Andy. I started as a regatta client, as a regatta entrant, campaigning boats in the mid 90’s particularly. It’s very interesting to look at the whole scene from two sides, firstly from the racing side as a consumer and critic, and then by 2000 when we started Sail-World, as a media representative.

With Sail-World, now in six regions across the world, we see a lot of regattas. Immediately before this event, I was the Media Director at the Etchells Worlds in San Francisco, then as Sail-World USA, covered the Big Boat series on the same waters.

In many regions regattas and races, are as Marty has said, destination tourism.

As far as the marine industry is concerned regattas generate major business. For businesses like sail-makers, they produce spikes on the business activity calendar, very much related to things such as ‘I need my set of sails done by that date’. It presents across the year a series of focal points, owners and skippers saying, ‘OK we’ve got to have the boat ready by such and such a date, we’ve got to have that done.’ Regattas give people a whole series of targets that do affect the marine industry generally.

Spikes in business can often be ‘quite peaky’. In Australia for instance, if you were trying to get a new set of sails built in December you would have to own a super maxi and have lots and lots of money, otherwise you’d be ignored.

Regattas and races certainly provide a lot of economic activity.

One of the important things for event organisers to absorb is, at the top end when they are considering ‘does the regatta need to spend money on better ground tackle or mark laying boats’, is the understanding that owners in the racing division might be spending up to $100,000 US, but probably averaging $40,000 US, to be at their regatta. Organisers might think, ‘oh no, that couldn’t be’ but it’s reality. By the time owners move boats around, buy sails, look after crew, fly people to and from and pay staff, you’re talking quite large amounts of money.

And at these regattas the people who are most critical about the regatta management are the people who are spending most of the money. If you’ve spend US$30,000 getting to a regatta and so have half a dozen of your racing friends, and you see that the management has saved US$5,000 and the quality of racing has suffered, it’s a major disincentive to come again next year. Now days you have plenty of choice – there are simply a lot of regattas on sailing calendars worldwide.

While the racing group is important, major benefits for the marine industry and tourism industry come from the much larger cruising divisions.

If you look at the Kings Cup, that is the case. At a regatta like Hamilton Island Race Week in Australia with about 200 boats, you find that there are 60 boats racing very seriously but the biggest fleet is in the cruising division.

At Skandia Geelong Week, where there will be 450 – 500 boats, you find a similar number in cruising; there are really only 100 boats racing hard.

It’s important this cruising segment must be looked after too. They are spending quite a lot of money but the money is spent right across the spectrum. One of the things that we can see in Asia, Australia and around the Pacific, is that significant dollars really come from the cruising boats that often take a long time to get to a destination. So the Cruising fraternity will move through a region, in your case coming up this coast or coming up the Australian coast and then they will hang around for quite long periods of time. They will turn their regatta into a family holiday; they will fly other members of the family in to join them.

This is an important market segment. There are lots of travel miles. Sailors sometimes have family reunions at events, people come and go and friends fly in from where