SeaDream Yacht Club plans to broaden its presence in Asia, with a focus on attracting more passengers from the region and expanding into more remote ports.
The luxury cruise operator sailed into Bangkok’s Khlong Toei port on Sunday 2 March 2014, and the company’s director of business development, Richard Jones, told Travel Daily that he is now considering future destinations, where larger cruise ships can’t venture.
Already in the frame for the future are the islands of Myanmar’s Mergui Archipelago and the waters around Trang and Satun in southern Thailand. “We are going to explore that more when we come back,” Jones.
That won’t be till November 2015, and in the meantime SeaDream is hoping to build a larger customer base in Asia. SeaDream’s visit to Bangkok formed part of a process intended to educate local markets about the company’s offerings.
“We are a niche product” said Jones. “But Asians who are well travelled like the service and the intimacy.”
Two things could enhance SeaDream’s Asian ambitions; its golf cruises (SeaDream is the only yacht with a golf simulator on board) and its incentive and charter business. Approximately 40% of the company’s business is charter, which can be popular with the Asian corporate market. “We’ve had Amway Japan on board four times” Jones revealed, hinting as to what the market might be in the long-term.
In total, 40% of SeaDream’s passengers are Americans, while 30% are European and 12% Australians. But Jones said the company’s biggest emerging markets are Brazil and Asia.
The company operates two mega-yachts that can carry only 112 guests, or 56 couples, and 95 crew members.
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