In future, the two companies will work closely together, Argos will in future use the so-called booking engine from SamBoat. Customers can recognise this by the small addition "powered by SamBoat" on the Argos website. Behind this is a trend that has been going on in the charter industry for some time: A broad merger of companies and business areas is taking place, creating large, closely interlinked units. In the case of Argos and SamBoat, it looks like this: Both companies became part of the French Dream Yacht Charter Group a few years ago, which in turn was bought by the Beneteau Group as a majority stake. Shipyards, fleet operators, purely digital and "classic" charter agencies are thus growing closer together.
Nevertheless, Argos and SamBoat expressly emphasise that they remain independent as a brand. Argos supports its customers as an agency with detailed advice, including trade fair appearances and a permanent office. SamBoat, on the other hand, operates purely as an online booking portal. The latter are often young start-ups that have an enormous amount of technical expertise and know how to bundle the many booking software products available on the market (MMK, Nausys, Sedna, etc.) into one overlying software and, above all, keep it up to date. This enables them to find ships quickly and efficiently in practically every destination in the world. In addition, credit card payments and other features are already implemented in some cases, which is rather unusual for agencies. For the smaller traditional agencies, these digital services were often associated with a great deal of effort, which tied up a lot of time and money that the agents would rather invest in good advice and customer service.
For years, it looked as if there was competition between online-only agencies with limited advice but fast bookings on the one hand and traditional agencies on the other, some of which are more competent in providing information about sailing areas and advising on fleet features. However, a juxtaposition is now becoming established in the German market: customers who value the advice provided by the agencies remain loyal to them, while those who just want a quick booking go to the online agencies. This was also the case after Sailogy took over the Master Yachting agency and Click & Boat took over Scansail. But the agencies remain strong, especially in the national markets. For this reason, Dream Yacht Charter has taken over traditional agencies in France and England.
There have been similar developments in other areas, such as when the investor CMP, which also owns the Bavaria Group, recently founded its own charter company, the Infiniti Charter Group, and is also active in the charter market with the acquisition of fleet operator Sun Charter and most recently a close co-operation with Pitter Yachting and the Nautic Alliance. However, the shipyard and charter company are completely independent of each other. Dream Yacht Charter always emphasises this. And that makes sense, because the days when a fleet operator could afford to concentrate on just one or a few yacht brands are long gone. Nowadays, customers want a good selection of brands, much like the big car hire companies.
In fact, some customers may fear that such co-operations mean that the agencies are no longer quite as independent and that they tend to only book the fleets of their larger association as a result. The YACHT editorial team also asked itself this question, and so we asked around at boot: Are bookings from agents who now belong to a different fleet organisation declining among larger fleet operators? A random sample showed that this is not the case. If the fleet is of good quality (and we only asked this question), the agency continues to book without any major declines, because it knows full well that customers would notice such behaviour at some point and the receipt may well be the loss of a valuable regular customer. In any case, agencies have to suggest different types of boats and years of construction, a choice of boats and of course prices is simply part of the process.
