Feadship Forms Charter Division
Feadship announced today that it is the newest yacht builder to enter the charter business, joining the likes of Sunseeker and Hargrave, which have had their own branded charter agencies for a while. The Dutch company’s Feadship Charter Division will operate out of its offices in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The new division is being created “in response to a significant number of requests from Feadship owners, as well as people seeking to charter a Feadship,” Feadship America President Francois van Well said in a press release.
Like the Sunseeker and Hargrave operations, the Feadship Charter Division’s fleet will include only boats built by its brand-name yard. There is currently one boat available, according to marketing manager Francis Vermeer: the F45 Vantage Harle, which booked a charter through the company this past Easter.
The person who will run the new Feadship Charter Division is D.J. Kiernan, who as I type this is on a plane bound from Holland to the United States and, thus, unavailable for comment. I asked Vermeer whether Kiernan was a broker, and she said, “Broker is the wrong word. He is the contact person.”
I checked the membership rosters of the four key professional organizations for international charter brokers: MYBA, CYBA International, AYCA, and FYBA. It appears the only one Kiernan is connected with is FYBA, but according to their offices, he was a member last year and failed to renew his membership dues for 2008.
That’s less than ideal, as you regular readers of CharterWave know–and it seems to be a trend among boatbuilders who open their own charter divisions. Hargrave and Sunseeker started out operating the same way, using people who were not yet connected with the reputable charter broker community to launch their own divisions.
It will be interesting to see how many Feadships migrate from established charter management companies into the shipyard’s new Charter Division under these circumstances. I hope to get more information about the new division for you on Monday, when Kiernan is scheduled to be back and available for questions.