Cannes Yachting Festival Eye-Witness Report
International boat shows are almost always reported on by members of the media, and dwell quite properly on the new boats seen there. (We will give you our take on the show tomorrow.) But this year we are offering first a look at one of the most popular, and largest, boat shows in the world from the perspective of one of Europe’s most prominent boat builders.
A Special Report, written by Kiran Jay Haslam, Chief Marketing Officer, for Princess Yachts, Worldwide, gives insight into the people, and work involved, behind the scenes at boat shows in this time of Covid-19.
Those who know me well, are familiar with my joking description of the marine industry as “a bunch of people drinking with a boating problem.”
Jokes aside, what I really mean is, we tend to have a good time. A lot.
In fact, when dealing with the world of boats, you tend to have to be consistently operating at a level of “peak elation” or happiness, simply to engage with clients, the products, insurers, authorities, crew, manufacturers, maintenance, and sales teams.
It’s a big list of people, and they all congregated at Cannes last week.
The Boat Show Circus
It has been a bizarre two years since we were last here at Cannes. Our industry has always leaned on boat shows, like an old set of school nurse crutches.
Nearly everyone in the industry fears missing out on a single show, so we set ourselves up for the circus. Run the show, pack it all up, move along and do our very own take on Groundhog Day over 40 times a year, across marinas and exhibition centers all over the world.
My team at Princess are responsible for operating around 20 percent of those 40 shows as a factory-backed operation. It is incredibly hard work, but tremendous fun, and we typically see a disproportionately high number of sales from off the show stands that creates peaks and troughs in our 12-month sales graph.
The Sales Effects of Covid
Covid has flattened that graph out, but it has raised it up to a flat-yet-record-high base line, and so we see our orders going out past the end of 2023 for even our smallest craft. The safety, predictability and “social yet distant” comfort of travel aboard your own boat totally makes sense in this new post-pandemic reality.
The trip over to Nice from Heathrow was truly bizarre. Days before the flight I loaded up three separate APPS in order to pull through vaccine certificates and make “honorable declarations” to comply with the current restrictions on travel.
I must say that travelling at this moment in time conjures up an exploratory feeling of being a pioneer on a new frontier. Except for when you board your flight, and every single seat is taken and the person seated next to you takes off their mask and starts wolfing down a packet of crisps whilst breathing heavily in between each handful! Back to reality.
The Ambiance of Cannes
This Cannes show feels incredibly different now. Everyone seems super relaxed. We have a much more modest plan for our hospitality and a boat lineup that can easily be described as “rock n’ roll” -- Y and X class global debuts, and some clever tech being launched including our new Hybrid “Superfly” in collaboration with MAN.
It is interesting to see how the organizers are reacting to a sustainability challenge that most of us as exhibitors have been calling out for over many years, and of course, to really make a difference it is about doing a little less, perhaps, to produce a lot less waste.
Congratulations to the organizers here in France. Since 2016 – when we stamped out Single-Use Plastics across all Princess international events, started serving only sustainable produce and re-using literally any item or material from our stand build – we started a journey that I believe many other businesses in our industry can join us on.
The Time Has Come for Sustainability
I’m not a fan of “green peacocking”, and I think many of us need to come together and look at synergies and alignment within our environmental plans to effect even greater change, and faster.
We stopped printing brochures this year and switched to e-brochures, and we have stopped giving away any branded merchandise that might eventually make its way to landfill. Not as a cost-saving measure – albeit a lovely aspect of this – but rather, as a commitment to stop producing waste, and shipping unnecessary items around with us.
Kiran Haslam
Chief Marketing Mayhem Officer, Princess Yachts Limited