At this time of year, we all get cards, e.mails and messages wishing everyone a Merry Christmas or Seasons Greetings, many of which are sent to nameless contacts or generic addresses, without the personal connection or human touch that Christmas is all about. Now I’m not being a Superyacht Grinch and if anyone did send me a hand-written card or a personalised gift, they were appreciated and probably already eaten before the holidays.

Anyway, having spent some time reflecting on 2024 and all of the projects, meetings, discussions and ideas that have emerged, and even considered the transition of our business away from big events into a boutique strategic consultancy and intelligent media channels, I’m now focused on 2025 and what’s in store for The Superyacht Group and the superyacht market.

We always learn from the past and it informs the future. So I have a few lessons that I feel are going to form part of our next few years, namely who you employ as part of your team, how distracted you are from your competitors and remembering to stay focused on what you’re good at and what you love doing.

The first topic for the future is “team”, since our exit from The Superyacht Forum and the consolidation of our business into what it is today, I now have the leanest and most focused team that is fit for the future. We will be hiring in 2025 and we will be looking for a variety of next-gen members of the team, specifically smart journalists, intelligent analysts and some professional, client-facing market experts. We already have some interesting candidates on our radar and I’m looking forward to expanding our team to deliver on our future plans.

Next, we look at our competitors and how distracting they can be. Luckily, the market is relatively small and there are only a handful of people we classify as competitors, but even though we watch carefully and observe their movements and developments, we know we have pivoted in such a way that our mission is to remain independent, unique and agile and be very different in our approach. We recognise that it’s not all about the money and how many people we reach or engage with, but it’s how much value we deliver and to whom.

Finally, our plan in 2025 is to stay focused on what we’re good at and what we enjoy doing. The freedom and time we have been afforded by removing ourselves from the big event space means we all have more time to focus on market analysis, independent journalism and business strategy. So, to reinforce, as we start 2025 with our New Build Report and some very exciting strategic projects with some major clients, I am personally, very excited about the future plans for The Superyacht Group.

With SuperyachtNews.com, The Superyacht Report and The Superyacht Agency as our core brand pillars, we have a clear plan to expand this trio of expert projects into the most valued and trusted sources of information for the market. Following our open-source strategy, announced earlier this year, we have some interesting ideas emerging that will be shared with the industry in the first quarter. We have seen the appetite for our content and our reports and by being digital first, our reach is increasing by the week, but we now need to make sure we provide the right platform for the industry to share more of their ideas, insights, opinions and innovations in a truly open source strategy, where anyone can have their say.

I’m looking forward to the break over the holidays, but am also looking forward to being back in 2025 and to share with you all some of the initiatives, ideas and intelligence that we’ve been working on. It’s going to be a very interesting year and I’m confident that you will appreciate some of the plans we have for our portfolio.

Have a wonderful Holiday Season and see you all in 2025.

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