What is Your Go-To Boat Search Engine?
Most of you are likely to answer: ‘YachtWorld’.

 

How has your recent boat search experience been on YachtWorld?
Most of you are likely to answer ‘frustrating’ – it’s hard to search, boat info is broken up with outside ads and the mobile version of a listing is not the full version of the listing.

 

Bear with us – here’s a bit of History:
When we (Jon and Anne) started working as yacht brokers in 2005, YachtWorld was the up-and-coming multiple listing system (MLS).  It was moving with the times, that is, internet outreach to a worldwide market. There was constant dialogue with brokers and dealerships to establish what tools those of us ‘at the helm’ needed, to navigate this new mode of doing business in the web-based yacht sales world. Yacht World was a private company started by a group of yacht brokers who knew what brokers and their clients needed. They were nimble and responsive and working for those of us who list boats, but also for those of you who are looking for boats.

 

Fast forward 20 years and not only has the world of the internet exploded, but YachtWorld has been bought out by several, ever-bigger holding companies. It is now one arm of Boats Group, which is the umbrella company for BoatTrader, Boats.com and several overseas/foreign-language boating websites, effectively tying up a huge segment of the MLS arena. Over time Boats Group has become less nimble and less willing to listen to the people ‘at the helm’.  The current owners of Boats Group are Permira Funds, a Private Equity Company based in the United Kingdom, with no interest in boats, brokers, or buyers, other than for the profit they can glean from the platforms they own.

 

Boats Group and their private equity owners dictate changes, without consideration as to whether the changes are necessary or desirable; they have taken on advertising, so that the page is littered with ads, making it difficult for you, the buyer, to get to the details of a listing; they ‘bake in’ features at a certain price point, making it difficult for boat brokers to define our needs. Most interestingly (we think) is that Boats Group has no published pricing list.  Every brokerage house pays a monthly subscription that is designated by Boats Group at their whim – there is no standardization. The frustrating part is that the brokers provide and own the data that they are being billed for listing on the Boats Group platform! 

 

Which comes to the current state of our MLS world   

Boats Group has dramatically increased the price they charge brokers for use of the MLS service over the past few years and in particular in the past year. YaZu Yachting has seen an increase of 275% on the monthly subscription in the past thirteen months. The subscription to YachtWorld now consumes more than 25% of our monthly expenditure to run the company. This is an unsustainable rate and along with many other small and medium-sized brokerages, we are exploring alternatives.

 

What are WE doing about it?

Since July of last year YaZu Yachting has been testing the waters on other platforms and methods of marketing. We have taken on Yachtr and Rightboat, both of which are seeking to grow sufficiently to provide viable alternatives to YachtWorld at much much lower subscription rates. We are working on expanding our reach via Google Ads, Facebook, Facebook Marketplace and YouTube, all of which are starting to gain traction. Our website, which has been fed from YachtWorld, will, in future, be fed from Yachtr.  As of July 2025 our YachtWorld listings will be very basic listings (as that is all that people see if they are on a phone) and our full listings will be on Yachtr, Rightboat and yazuyachting.com.  This will help improve the search criteria for the alternative platforms and hopefully move them up the algorithms which are currently dominated by Boats Group.

 

What can YOU do about it?

1)  We ask that you start using Yachtr as your go-to search engine.  This is a relatively new service, but it is a broker-owned platform which has been created by IYBA (International Yacht Brokers Association – Florida based organization).  It’s sole purpose is to serve the brokers and brokerage houses and to create an easy search engine for boat buyers or browsers.  It can never be subject to the price gouging that private companies feel entitled to. Less traffic on YachtWorld and more on Yachtr, will improve Yachtr’s standing.

 

2)  Share this with anyone who has any interest in boats.

So there you have it folks.

 

Thanks for reading this far.  Happy 2025!  We have had a good start to the year, with a couple of January closings and several surveys set for February.

 

We are optimistic that 2025 will be a bumper year for YaZu Yachting – and one of interesting changes!