Acquera Yachting, the full-service superyacht agent, has announced that it has completed the acquisition of Evolution Yacht Agents. This follows the announcement in April 2019 that the two businesses had formed a strategic partnership, and further supports Acquera Yachting’s ambitious growth plans.

“Even as a competitor in the past I was really impressed and I really appreciated what Evolution did. However, I wasn’t very happy about it because I was on the other side,” jokes Stefano Tositti, CEO of Acquera Yachting. “I really respected how the company was managed, the level of the service, the quality of the staff and so on.

“When we first started the Acquera project, we recognised that, in order to achieve our goals, we had to join forces with people who shared the same vision, ethics and enthusiasm that we have – the same desire to do things properly. When I first spoke to Bea [Beatriz Alonso] I recognised someone that shared my values.”

Evolution Yacht Agents founders Beatriz Alonso and Belen Martin will both become shareholders of the Group. Alonso will continue to be managing director of Spain and will take on the role of COO of the Group. Martin will continue to run the day to day operations in Spain and will form part of the corporate management team of the Group. 

“As Stefano said, there was already a great deal of respect between Evolution and Acquera because of our shared values and, from a business perspective, Evolution is nearly 10 years old and we have built a fantastic business in Spain, it was time for us to begin the next phase of our development and take the company to the next level,” comments Alonso.

According to Tositti, the acquisition of Evolution Yacht Agents will allow Acquera to dramatically increase its presence and strength across the Mediterranean and overseas, such is the strength of the Evolution brand. “One of the driving forces behind the acquisition was the incredibly high level of management and staff in Spain, their years of experience in the industry are invaluable,” he says. “They will be an excellent addition to the already existing network of offices in Italy, France, Monaco and Montenegro.”

“Through our strategic partnership, we discovered that each of us has many strengths and all our efforts will now be focussed on combining them,” continues Alonso. “We are 100 per cent confident that all of our clients will immediately feel the positive effects of our new group status. Our mission is simply to provide seamless excellence and the highest client satisfaction.”

In an industry that is in the midst of a fairly rapid period of modernisation and professionalisation, superyacht agents still continue to come under fire for the lack of consistency across various companies and regions. Indeed, within this highly specialised sector, the quality of service provided by superyacht agents can flit from military-style professionalism and efficiency to being inefficient and self-serving. The aim, therefore, of businesses like Evolution Yacht Agents and Acquera Group must be to ensure that superyacht owners, charter guests, captains, managers and the many other stakeholders that require agency services are met by the former rather than the latter.

“Generally speaking, this industry is evolving and maturing almost across the board and you need to be able to anticipate its needs,” says Tositti. “The management of the vessels of themselves is becoming more structured and, therefore, efficiency and quality of service is the paramount requirement in order to satisfy these professional structures. We have listened to people complain about this sector of the market, challenging agents to become more efficient and transparent and that is exactly what our Group is doing. The old way of doing things may work for some businesses, but we believe that you need to continually innovate and upgrade your procedures and systems in order to fully satisfy our clients.

“We will continue to innovate and we intend to be a serious player in the superyacht market,” concludes Tositti.

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