The Name Game
I spent some time this morning touring a motoryacht called Harmony 1. She is part of the Merrill-Stevens fleet, a perfectly nice 105-footer that spends all year round here in the Mediterranean. Even though the boat’s proper name is Harmony 1, her brochure and related literature call her, simply, Harmony–which is the thing, I think, that threw off the charter broker who was onboard with me.
It was about halfway through the tour, down in the guest cabin area, when the broker said she couldn’t understand why the cabins were arranged so differently than their description in the book she’d been given before the show. According to her literature, the yacht had two cabins in particular that were rearrangeable to suit either four or six people. That didn’t look at all like what we were seeing.
Turns out, she was looking at literature for the 120-foot motoryacht Harmony, an entirely different boat by the same name that charters literally on the other side of the world through a whole other management company. She felt silly, of course, and laughed off the mistake–but at the same time made a quick note in her book to ensure she didn’t give bad information to a client like you in the future.
The lesson here–one that I repeat often here on CharterWave–is that it’s always best to book a charter yacht through a reputable broker who has actually stepped onboard. Simple confusion like this is something the better brokers avoid by doing thorough research before presenting charter yacht options to you. They know what’s in a brochure, and then they know what they’ve seen with their own two eyes. That’s why the best brokers attend these boat shows, to ensure they’re giving you accurate, up-to-date information before you book your charter yacht vacation.
Similarly, this is one of the main reasons I always suggest working with a reputable broker instead of going to a website that lets you book with a yacht directly. Let’s face it: If a professional broker who looks at yachts for a living can get confused, the odds are pretty high that you can, too.