I received an interesting press release this month from American Express Travel. It cited luxury cruising as a growing market, and then listed the top five amenities and excursions that people are requesting onboard cruise ships:

Amenities requested: suite upgrades, private butler service, gourmet chefs, expert lectures, private pools and balconies.

Excursions requested: private tours, cooking demonstrations, wine tastings, golf excursions, and scuba diving/snorkeling.

What’s interesting to me about these requests is not that vacationers are making them, but that they think the best place to find these things is onboard cruise ships. Pretty much every single thing on these lists is, in fact, a description of private yacht charter. It’s literally what charter is, compared with a mere upgrade that you can get onboard a mass-market cruise ship.

If only travel agents weren’t so in the pocket of the cruise ship companies, you might actually be offered charter as a vacation option in the first place when you ask for these kinds of things. Instead, companies like American Express Travel seem determined to convince you that you can have a charter-like experience onboard a cruise ship–which is simply untrue.

Should you be one of the growing number of people who want the kinds of amenities and upgrades listed above, then contact a reputable charter broker instead of a travel agent, American Express or otherwise. Cruise ship upgrades aren’t the best way to get what you’re seeking. They’re a far less appealing version of the real thing, which is private yacht charter vacations.

I taped an hour-long interview yesterday with a radio station out in California for a program called “The Good Life” that will air in about three weeks. The show’s host spent nearly the entire hour asking me questions about yacht charter vacations until he got to the ultimate question, the one so many people ask me after finding CharterWave or reading my book Have the Whole Boat for the first time:

Why in the world haven’t I ever heard of this vacation option before?

As I told him, the answer is simple. There is no lobbying group organized to promote the idea of charter yacht vacations. CharterWave is the first mass-market attempt to bring the option of chartering to the general public’s attention.

He was a bit incredulous, so I explained this in comparison with the cruise ship industry. Its main corporations sponsor a group called CLIA– the Cruise Lines International Association–that spends millions upon millions of dollars a year in advertising and lobbying to ensure that potential customers think about cruise ships first when it comes to seagoing vacations.

The charter industry doesn’t have such a champion. It’s composed of individual people who own private boats. The main companies in the charter industry simply haven’t yet begun working together to promote the idea of charter in general. Heck, they’re just now coming onboard with the idea of supporting an editorial product like CharterWave.

I hope this will change in the future, of course, but until then, CharterWave remains the only place dedicated to reporting on and supporting the worldwide charter yacht industry. That’s why you haven’t heard of charter before. And why we’re so happy to make your acquaintance now.

I received an e-mail yesterday from a travel agent in Ontario, Canada. She apparently found CharterWave on the Internet and mistook me for a charter broker. Here is what her e-mail said:

“Dear Kim, I have a client who is interested in hiring a catamaran during Christmas in Belize. They would like to hire it for a period of only three or four days. Do you have a minimum rental for this period? They require four cabins and a full crew. If you could provide me with options I would appreciate it, and also if this booking would be commissionable to us?”

I share this with you here because I think it’s a classic example of why anyone booking a private yacht charter vacation should work directly with a reputable charter broker instead of with a travel agent.

This particular travel agent is quite clear about showing she knows absolutely nothing about charter yacht vacations, yet wants to keep the client away from a reputable charter broker who does, simply to keep her commission intact.

It’s an all too familiar tale, one that I hear all the time in the charter industry. Scenarios like this almost always end up frustrating the broker as well as the client, as the travel agent refuses to step aside even though she has no idea what she’s talking about when it comes to chartering yachts.

Even if your travel agent has been great in the past, the odds are that when you ask her for a private yacht charter, she’s sending out random e-mails like this one to people she doesn’t even know, trying to figure out how the charter industry works. Is that really the way you want your vacation to be organized? I seriously doubt it.

Go to the charter broker directly to get the best service, not to mention some basic assurances that you’re working with and actual broker in the first place.