Hong Kong needs a boat show, but who should run it?
by Guy Nowell 12 Apr 2019 06:30 PDT
China Merchants Wharf, Hong Kong. Not here, please © Guy Nowell
Hong Kong really needs a boat show. A good one, that draws in all the leisure marine industry in Hong Kong, from the waterfront chandlers in Ap Lei Chau to the charter brokers and the superyacht dealers. Not some hole-in-the-wall small scale thing run (poorly) in a private marina, and giving all the appearance of being more self-advertising than open door.
Hong Kong is, de facto, the biggest boating centre in Asia, with over 10,000 registered ‘pleasure vessels’ on the books, a greater number of functioning boat and yacht clubs than anywhere else in the region, and innumerable casual and regular boat owners and boat users. Regattas run by the principal yacht clubs put hundreds of people out on the water, the weekend hire junk fleets out of Aberdeen and Sai Kung count their customers in the thousands, and if you are lucky enough to be able to afford a 100ft motor yacht and the fuel to go in it - join the crowd. You could even settle for part-ownership! The point is, boating in Hong Kong goes all the way from a couple of people in a sampan in the middle of Victoria Harbour jigging for tiddlers right up to 200ft superyachts and the attendant social glam that goes with them.
Hong Kong has (officially) 265 islands and 1,178km of coastline, all within a stone’s throw of the centre of one of the most high-powered cities in the world. However, there’s a massive shortage of mooring spaces, and no sign of things changing on that front any time soon. There are patches of water – typhoon shelters - that could be turned into marinas practically at the drop of a hat, but the HK Govt has little or no appreciation of the size and importance of the leisure boating industry, and little inclination to pay attention to anything other than the commercial operations of Hong Kong as a port.
You’d think that with this sort of boating activity going on, a Hong Kong Boat Show would be a no-brainer. Not so. Over the years there have been boat shows, the most durable of which were the HK International Boat Show at Marina Cove and the Hong Kong Gold Coast Boat Show. Both of these were very small in-water affairs with little or no land-side activity of any appreciable scale. Boats on display were whatever the dealers and brokers could beg or borrow back from the customers that they had sold them to, and the whole shemozzle appeared to be really rather second hand – despite the glowing and self-congratulatory press releases that were issued year after year.
Gold Coast has not thrown a boat show for two years now, citing redevelopment of the marina. Last year, Marina Cove politely ducked their usual slot in early December to make way for a new event called the Hong Kong Cruise & Yacht Festival, run by the HK Cruise & Yacht Industry Association, which clearly knows almost nothing about yachting, having tried to run an event at one of the most disastrously inappropriate locations imaginable. This was China Merchants Wharf, a commercial pier at the western end of Victoria Harbour, nearby Green Island and adjacent to the Victoria Mortuary. On a quiet day it still cops the wash from countless jetfoils, hydrofoils, and jetcats plying the HK-Macau route, and then even more from the inter-island ferries on the scheduled Central to Lantau/Cheung Chau/Lamma/Peng Chau services.
Yesterday we received news that Verventia, organisers of both the Singapore Yacht Show and the Thailand Yacht Show, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with none other than the HK Cruise & Yacht Industry Association to run a boat show in Hong Kong - HKCYIA certainly need some help with this one.
HKCYIA is a strange beast. Associations usually speak on behalf of a professional or industry group – for example, the HK Association of Banks, or the Hong Kong Shipowners’ Association. Quite who the HKCYIA represents is cloudy; there is no list of current members and no ‘Members’ section on its website. One thing is abundantly clear: the HKCYIA does not represent the wider boating industry in Hong Kong – that job is already being done by the Hong Kong Boating Industry Association (Hong Kong BIA).
HKCYIA is ‘linked’ with the China Cruise & Yacht Industry Association, but a web search there produces only a ‘404 Not Found’. HKCYIA is also ‘linked’ to the China and Hong Kong Governments (do not confuse the two!) and to China Merchants Group, a China state-owned enterprise.
Let’s hazard a guess here: the HKCYIA is much like the Macau Yacht Show – owned by mainland money, devoid of local and/or industry knowledge, and in the market for a quick buck with little real regard for further development of the yacht industry. The Macau Yacht Show has to be the worst yacht show we have ever seen – let’s hope that whatever HKCYIA cook up in Hong Kong is better, although at least they will have Andy Treadwell (Singapore Yacht Show, Thailand Yacht Show) on their side.
And then there’s the Greater Bay Area, one of those political labels that it is expedient to get behind. Quite recently, IBI reported that the new HK-Zhuhai-Macau bridge was going to alleviate the Hong Kong moorings shortage by allowing boats to overspill into hitherto deserted boat parks in China… the near-deserted Nansha Marina, for example. This is nonsense. As a great many people have found out already, restrictions on both commercial and private vehicles have made the traffic on the HKZM bridge fall far below initial estimates. Popping across to Nansha from Hong Kong for an evening cruise on the coffee-coloured Pearl River, and driving home again afterwards, isn’t really going to happen.
Lastly, there’s the promised HKCYIA/China Merchants Superyacht Services Management Centre which Kara Yeung, Executive Director of the HKCYIA says will be “the first dedicated service centre in Asia for superyachts up to 35m (110ft) including refit, maintenance and repair.” We can think of a few people who will take issue with that statement.
Yes, Hong Kong needs a decent boat show. But it whether the rather nebulous HK Cruise & Yachting Association who represent nobody and nothing in Hong Kong except themselves, and Verventia, the people who promised to transform yachting in Thailand, are the right people to do this is quite another matter.