South Pacific collaboration at the Monaco Yacht Show 2019
by Maddie Spencer 5 Oct 2019 23:31 PDT
Long discussed ideas of collaboration were brought to life at the Monaco Yacht Show, 25-28 September 2019. The South Pacific stand in the Darse Sud tent promoted the region with representatives from Australia, Cook Islands, Indonesia and PNG. The collaboration was a huge success with a large number of vessels indicating travel plans to the region over the next 2 years.
The Tuesday night before the show, the Australian and South Pacific exhibitors attended the Asia-Pacific Superyacht Assoc. (APSA) function sponsored by Superyacht Australia, strengthening relationships between the regional businesses and countries.
At the show this year the Australian Pavilion consisted of the South Pacific destination stand and exhibiting companies The Yard Brisbane, Rivergate Marina & Shipyard and Greencorp Marine. All exhibitors noted the high quality of leads at this year's show, with Tokyo Olympics 2020 and America's Cup in New Zealand 2021 greatly boosting the number of superyachts visiting the region over the next few years.
The Cook Islands dancers brought activity to the stand every hour, performing their traditional cultural dance with vibrant costumes. Within proximity to the stand was also the Tahiti and Fiji combined stand, with their own cultural dancers performing at the stand. Additionally, the oldest international sporting trophy in the world, the America's Cup was on display just outside the Darse Sud tent. "The Auld Mug" giving a not too subtle reminder of the need to plan your passage to the South Pacific in time for the event that commences in just 18 months' time.
"The Monaco Yacht Show is part of Superyacht Australia's approach to work collaboratively with our South Pacific and South East Asian neighbours to continue to increase the number of vessels in this region." David Good, CEO of Superyacht Australia stated.
"One of our key objectives is to encourage vessels to come to Australia for refit and maintenance. Too often vessels feel they won't have maintenance support away from the major yachting regions of Europe and the USA. Australia offers refit, maintenance facilities and services that rival what's available anywhere in the world and once discovered, is often a comfort to captains and fleet managers. This aids in the decision to deploy vessels to this part of the world. There has been over $100M spent of refit infrastructure in Australia in the past 12 months alone. This is the benefit we provide our Pacific neighbours; we can assist in attracting and keeping vessels in the pacific longer as they do not need to venture all the way back to Europe or the East Coast of the USA for survey or refit. The more vessels that visit and longer they stay in the Pacific, the more the region benefits as a whole," continued David.
"The Cook Islands dancers really drew the crowds and there were a lot of mesmerized people. There was a lot of interest about chartering of yachts and captains wanting to bring vessels to the South Pacific. The stand was a great success and we achieved our goals and objectives." Said Katrina Matheson from Maritime Cook Islands.
We would like to thank the following businesses for their contributions to the South Pacific stand and all your efforts in making it such a success: Maritime Cook Islands, Superyacht Group Great Barrier Reef, Gold Coast City Marina & Shipyard, The Lighthouse Consultancy, Acutec Systems, Ocean Alliance, Asia Pacific Superyachts and Melanesian Yachts.
The South Pacific stand will continue to grow in 2020, with additional South Pacific nations expressing interest in collaborating on the stand next year.