Local yacht sellers are heading into one of the biggest boat shows of the year amid improving sales after the downturn nearly ran the business aground.
“You can only stand under a cold shower for so long,” said Duncan McIntosh, producer of the Newport Boat Show at Lido Marina Village. “You’ve got to step outside and dry off.”
The show, which runs April 28 through May 1, features new and used boats 35 feet and longer, costing as much as $7 million.
McIntosh, publisher of The Log, Sea Magazine and other publications, also puts on the Lido Yacht Expo, held in Newport Beach in September.
After a tough few years for yacht sales, McIntosh said he expects more exhibitors this year. The show typically has 300 to 400 exhibitors and draws 10,000 to 14,000 people.
“We’re pretty bullish that we’ll have as big a show, if not bigger, than we’ve had in the last four to five years,” McIntosh said.
In a sign of improving times for yacht dealers, boat shows held across the nation this year have seen larger crowds, according to the Chicago-based National Marine Manufacturers Association.
Of the 14 winter boat shows produced through mid-March, all but four saw a boost in attendance.
Boat shows allow buyers to compare a variety of brands and models in one place.
“Otherwise you’re driving up and down the coast,” McIntosh said.
At a boat show, buyers climb aboard the yachts, ask questions and compare prices.
Meeting Buyers
For sellers, boat shows usually are the first point of contact with a buyer.
“We meet all of our people at boat shows,” said Chris Elliott, who sells yachts for Compass Point Yachts in Newport Beach. “Sometimes it takes them five years to buy a boat from us. But we can track them back to the first boat show we met them at.”
About 60% of boat buyers attended at least one boat show in the 12 months prior to buying a boat, according to National Marine Manufacturers Association.
In all, it costs Compass Point Yachts about $5,000 to display a boat at the show, which includes the rate to exhibit at roughly $33 a foot. Elliott said he chalks it up as a marketing expense. The shows are a necessity, he said.
Elliott is hopeful going into the Newport show: “I always think of it as being our biggest boat show.”
Compass Point Yachts is the exclusive West Coast seller of the boats from Australia’s Maritimo Offshore Pty Ltd.
Maritimo is relatively new to the U.S., so the market isn’t flooded with its boats, according to Elliott.
Industrywide sales have improved a bit but still are off from where they were prior to the downturn, he said.
For the past couple of years, Compass Point Yachts has been selling roughly 15 yachts a year priced from $400,000 to $2.5 million and at an average of about $1 million.
Prior to the downturn, Compass Point Yachts sold two to three times as many boats a year. Economic uncertainty still has many buyers waiting on the sidelines, Elliott said.
“The people who are buying have the means to buy, but they hold back because they think things are going to get worse,” he said. “We get close to sales, and then they pull back.”
National Sales
Nationally, sales of recreational boats fell 14% in 2010 from 2009, according to the marine manufacturers association. In 2009, sales fell 24%.
The downturn’s toll on the boating industry shows up in boat registrations.
In Orange County, recreational boat registrations are down from nearly 70,000 in 2005 to 58,000 in 2010, according to the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles.
The used boat market has fared better.
“There’s some good deals out there,” said Bob Jarvis, a salesman at Mariner’s Yacht and Ship Brokerage Inc., which sells used yachts in Dana Point.
Mariner’s shows boats at the Dana Point Harbor Boat Show, set for June 9 through June 12.
Last year the brokerage sold a used 55-foot boat at the show.
