eYachtCharter.com
I received an e-mail this morning from someone identifying himself as the president of a new, online charter website called eYachtCharter.com. I’m pretty sure he thought I was a charter broker, because he offered to increase my charter booking revenue by at least 20 percent a year. (As you readers know, I don’t take charter bookings. I think that’s a conflict of interest for a journalist who covers the industry.)
But back to this e-mail. And I quote:
“I had the opportunity to review your operation and feel you provide the level of quality we require to list in our luxury yacht charter directory…”
This intrigued me further, because if he really had reviewed CharterWave, he would’ve clearly seen that I am not a charter broker. (A friend of mine who writes a great megayacht blog–and does not book charters–got a similar e-mail yesterday. Hint, hint.) I was now really skeptical about this web site being on the up-and-up.
So I went to eYachtCharter.com and looked around a bit–and didn’t see any reference to the key professional organizations run by reputable charter brokers, the groups that we here at CharterWave promote because they’re the best measure of whether a company is trustworthy. I also looked through some of the website’s articles, things like “Tips for a Cayman Islands Yacht Charter.” That one was really interesting to me, since typically, the Cayman Islands aren’t a destination for proper yacht charters.
At that point, I was really thinking these people had no idea what they were doing, so I called the company and asked to speak with the man who had e-mailed me. I instead ended up talking for about five minutes with their marketing person.
She explained to me that their website is meant to generate leads to charter brokers who sign up and pay them a fee. They list boats that people pay to have online, too, so that you can search through them.
“Just like Realtors use a closed MLS system,” she told me, “there’s Realtor.com that the public can use.” So eCharter.com is aiming to become the Realtor.com of the charter industry.
Fair enough. And good luck to them in that quest.
But for you, my dear readers, I would advise a note of caution. As we say here on CharterWave all the time, the boat is just the beginning when it comes to getting a proper charter vacation. Sticking with that real estate analogy, you can look at all the house brochures in the world–but only a good broker will be able to tell you what the neighborhood is really like. Same thing with charter yachts. It’s reputable brokers who are your best allies in booking a great vacation, not self-serve research through paid-for boat brochures over the Internet. At the very least, you want to do research through articles like our First Impressions here on CharterWave, which are editorial reviews (and sometimes not so glowing) instead of paid-for advertising that doesn’t admit to being such.
And frankly, that this new website can’t tell me apart from a charter broker makes me wonder just who’s advertising there–and whether you can trust them at all. If they think I provide the level of quality they’re looking for in a broker, then they’re in sorry shape, since I’m not a broker at all.
I suggest you wade cautiously into this new site. As they say in the housing market: buyer beware.