Owned by you.
Booked by us.
Chartering out a yacht you own is the one decision that changes the arithmetic of owning her. Smart Yachts prepares her for it, prices her week by week, defends the dates you keep for yourself, and hands you the accounts at the end of the season.
Two yachts, same berth.
One of them earns.
The crew, the berth, the insurance and the yard bill arrive whether or not anybody steps aboard. Most privately used yachts on this coast are genuinely lived on for four or five weeks a year. The other forty seven are paid for out of pocket.
Chartering does not turn a yacht into a business. It turns the weeks you were never going to use into an income that argues with the running cost. How loudly it argues depends almost entirely on one number, and that number is the one the model below moves.
Nobody charters a yacht to get rich. They do it so that owning her stops being an argument with the accountant.
A low season, a normal one,
and a very good one.
Move the season and watch what it does to the year. One average thirty metre motor yacht on the French Riviera, round numbers throughout, no yacht in particular and no quotation implied.
- Weekly asking rate
- €88,000
- Gross charter income
- €0
- Your share, about three quarters
- €0
- Annual running cost
- €780,000
- Still on you
- €780,000
Indicative only, and deliberately generic. Every figure above describes an average thirty metre charter yacht on the French Riviera in round thousands. It is not your yacht, it is not a valuation and it is not an offer. A real weekly rate, a real running cost and the weeks a boat can genuinely reach all depend on her size, age, condition, layout, crew and calendar, and we put those numbers in writing for your yacht before you decide anything.
From your decision
to her first guests.
Eight stages. The first two decide whether it is worth doing at all, the next three make her legal and presentable, and the last three are the season itself.
- 01
The honest assessment
Broker aboardWhether she is a charter boat at all. Layout, cabin count, age, condition, toys, and above all the crew. If the answer is no, or not until a refit, you get that answer first and free.
- 02
Rate and calendar
Your weeks firstWhere she sits week by week against the boats she will be compared with, and which weeks you are keeping. Your own dates go in before a single enquiry is answered.
- 03
Commercial registration
Flag · complianceFlag, commercial certification, tonnage and safety compliance, so she can legally carry paying guests. Run with the same registration desk that handles our owners.
- 04
Insurance and contracts
Written, in advanceCover extended to commercial charter operation, VAT treatment for the cruising area, and the charter agreements explained in plain language before you sign one.
- 05
Crew and presentation
Charter packA crew who want guests aboard, briefed on your standards. Then photography, a charter specification and sample menus: a charter pack is not a sales brochure.
- 06
Central agency
One named brokerShe goes onto the central agency list and out to the retail charter brokers who hold the clients, with one named responsible broker attached to her everywhere.
- 07
Booking to boarding
You approve each oneEnquiries filtered, guests qualified, contract signed, APA lodged, preference sheet and itinerary agreed with your captain. No charter is confirmed without you.
- 08
The accounts
Per charter · per seasonAfter every charter and again at the end of the season: what came in, what the APA spent, what was returned, what was put right out of the deposit, what the year offset.
Chartered out.
Still entirely yours.
The reason owners hesitate is never the money. It is the fear of losing control of their own boat. So these four are structural, not favours.
Your weeks, blocked first
The dates you want her are in the calendar before she is offered to anybody, and they are not renegotiated in July because a good enquiry turned up.
Every booking approved
Nothing is confirmed without you. You see the party, the dates, the area and the rate, and you can say no without giving a reason.
A boat you still recognise
Your standards are briefed to the crew, wear is inspected at every turnaround, and anything damaged is put right out of the security deposit before you next step aboard.
One broker, not a queue
The same person sets the rate, runs the calendar and produces the accounts, and answers the phone in the middle of August.
One yacht.
Three ways she gets booked.
A listing on its own is passive. The weeks in a very good season are the ones somebody went and found, and the third column is the one that turns a good season into next year’s good season.
The broker network
Retail charter brokers hold the clients, and a central agency yacht is what they show them.
Where most weeks come fromOur own clients
A Monaco brokerage house whose buyers, sellers and charterers are frequently the same people.
Direct, no second commissionRepeat and referral
A guest who had a good week books the same boat again. This is what a crew is really for.
The cheapest week you will sellCurious about how charters work?
Ask Maria & Sami.
Brokers at Smart Yachts
Putting a yacht into charter is simpler than most owners expect, and worth understanding before a whole season is committed to it. Send over her name, her year and the weeks you want to keep for yourself, and back comes the rate, the calendar and a straight answer on whether she should charter at all.