But the Thai government having shown the way, there is no doubt that other Asian countries will follow suit. Thailand wants to take a chunk of a market worth USD 250 million in just the first year or two and is now the only country in Asia where foreign-flagged superyachts can charter.
They have not been able to come to Thailand, or anywhere else in Asia, until now, because of the de-facto prohibition on chartering – essential to owners as a means of defraying some of the huge costs of superyacht upkeep.įundamentally, this is the end of a 40-year wait for superyachts and means that, with Verventia’s marketing initiative and drive – providing they can raise the funding - Thailand will see many yachts starting to come to the Andaman Sea (the “East Indian Ocean”, as Verventia prefer to call it) and the Gulf of Siam for the European winter as an alternative to the Caribbean – until now the only winter option. Tens of thousands of ultra-high-spending superyacht tourists from the USA, Europe and the Middle East are looking for a new destination for their winter cruising holiday.
“It’s been frustratingly slow to get the necessary changes and processes implemented,” said Verventia CEO Andy Treadwell, “but at last, more than a year after the government announcement, we have finally been issued the very first charter license under the new regulations for a foreign-flagged superyacht that will spend the whole of next winter in Thailand as a result.”
Instead of being required to pay VAT on the yacht’s value, which was a non-starter, superyachts would now pay tax only on their charter earnings – a major win-win for everyone. Six years of lobbying led by Verventia, through the platform of the government-initiated Thailand Yacht Show, finally resulted in the Minister of Finance announcing, in February 2021, changes to regulations that now allow foreign-flagged superyachts to charter legally in Thailand.
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