How yacht charter pricing really works

Every charter conversation reaches the same moment: the brochure says €100,000 a week, and the proposal says €165,000. Nothing has gone wrong. The base rate was never the price, and the sooner the arithmetic is understood the better the week is.

The base rate

The base rate is what the owner receives for the use of the yacht and the crew for a week. It varies with size, age, condition and season, and it is the only number the brochure is obliged to show. In the Mediterranean, high season is July and August; mid season is May, June and September; the rest is low, when the same yacht costs a third less and the sea is often better.

Two yachts of the same length can differ by half in base rate. The difference is usually the crew, the volume and the toys, in that order. A cheaper boat with a crew who have been together for five years is almost always the better week.

The APA

The advance provisioning allowance is a deposit, typically 25 to 35 per cent of the base rate, paid before the charter and spent by the captain on everything consumed during it: fuel, food, drink, berthing fees, communications, the tender’s petrol, the ice. The captain keeps an account and shows it on request. What is not spent is returned; what runs over is settled at the end.

The APA is where the week is really shaped. A family that eats aboard, anchors rather than berths and drinks the house rosé will spend twenty per cent. A group that runs the engines every day, berths in Porto Cervo in August and orders the vintage will spend forty. We set the APA to the brief, not to the default.

VAT

VAT is charged on the charter fee at the rate of the country where the charter starts, and it is the part most people forget. France charges 20 per cent, Italy 22, Spain 21, Greece and Croatia 13, and Montenegro, Turkey and most of the Caribbean nothing. Several countries reduce the rate when the itinerary spends time outside their waters, which is one reason a week that starts in Antibes and ends in Calvi is priced differently from one that stays in the gulf.

We calculate VAT on the actual itinerary before you sign, and we say when a change of starting port would save more than it costs.

The gratuity

A crew gratuity of 10 to 15 per cent of the base rate is customary at the end of the charter, given to the captain to share. It is not contractual and it is universally expected, and on a boat where twelve people have worked sixteen-hour days to make your week look easy it is not the place to economise.

Delivery, insurance and the rest

If the yacht has to move from her home port to yours, a delivery fee covers the crew’s time and the fuel. Charter insurance for cancellation is worth having in the meltemi months. And the contract, usually the MYBA form, sets out what happens when the weather closes a harbour or a guest breaks a jet ski. We read it with you.