Zhao Kuan and Zhang Shuai | Yacht travel

According to statistics from CCYIA (China Communications Association Cruise and Yacht Branch), the current scale of my country's yacht industry is about 4 billion yuan. There are a total of 12,000 berths and 2,700 open-air moorings on land in the country. According to the 9,067 yacht berths and 3,285 yachts moored in the CCYIA sample survey in 2017, there are about 5,500 yachts moored in the country, and on average, about 270,000 people own a yacht. The per capita ownership is still far behind that of developed countries. Among the 3,285 yachts actually moored in the sample survey, the number of sailboats is 1,089, accounting for 33.2%, which is an upward trend from 28% in 2016. According to the forecast of the American Yacht Manufacturers Association, the scale of China's yacht market will reach about 53.6 billion yuan in 2020, of which the number of leisure ships will increase from 3,000 in 2012 to more than 100,000. According to the latest statistics from the Hainan Provincial Coast Guard and Port Office, the province has established 8 yacht manufacturing companies, 271 yacht sales and service companies, 39 yacht clubs, and 3 yacht-related professional training institutions. 14 yacht docks (sailing ports) have been built, with 1,658 berths. There are about 800 yachts in the province, and the number of yachts owned and the number of foreign yachts entering and leaving the country are among the highest in the country. Sanya's yacht industry started with the construction of the Hongzhou International Yacht Club in 2008. Over the past 10 years, it has achieved considerable development and has become the most representative city in Hainan's yacht industry. At present, Sanya has three dedicated yacht docks, including Hongzhou Yacht Dock, Banshan Bandao Sailing Port Dock, and Yalong Bay Yacht Dock (temporarily closed). There are nearly 60 registered yacht-related companies and 4 yacht clubs. According to the statistics of the Sanya Yacht and Sailing Association, as of December 31, 2017, Sanya's major yacht docks had a total of 1,148 berths, parking a total of 425 yachts of various types, and more than 4,000 direct yacht employees. Since the Volvo Ocean Race was held in Sanya for two seasons in 2012, grand events and exhibitions such as the Hainan Island Round the Island Regatta, the 2017-2020 Clipper Round the World Yacht Race, and the "Hainan Tian Shengyan" have been successfully held in Sanya. my country's yacht terminals and clubs are mainly concentrated in the following four regions: the Pearl River Delta region centered on Shenzhen, the Yangtze River Delta region centered on Shanghai, the North China coastal region centered on Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Shandong, and Hainan (centered on Sanya). Among the top 20 Chinese yacht cities selected by CCYIA, the Pearl River Delta region includes Shenzhen, Xiamen, Guangzhou, Zhuhai, Zhongshan, Shantou and other places, among which Shenzhen and Xiamen ranked first and second in the country in comprehensive scores. The Yangtze River Delta region includes Shanghai, Zhoushan, Ningbo, Suzhou, Wenzhou and other places, among which Shanghai ranks third in the country in comprehensive scores. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Shandong regions include Qingdao, Dalian, Tianjin, Rizhao and other places. Hainan includes Sanya and Haikou. According to CCYIA's assessment, among the top 20 yacht cities in China, Sanya ranks fourth in comprehensive ranking, second only to Shenzhen, Xiamen and Shanghai. It ranks high in natural environment, government management competitiveness and yacht service competitiveness. However, due to the limitation of industrial structure, Sanya lags behind cities in the Pearl River Delta and other places in terms of yacht industry competitiveness. Sanya's yacht economic effect is single, and no effective yacht economic industry chain has been formed. It is basically based on the operation of yacht tourism projects, with some basic repair and maintenance services. From the upstream of the chain, since Sanya's manufacturing industry does not have the industrial support environment for yacht production, the upstream yacht manufacturing industry in Sanya has a weak foundation. The middle of the industrial chain is the yacht circulation chain. The enterprise model in Sanya is mainly manifested in yacht club operation, yacht sales and leasing. From the perspective of business form, there are three types of enterprises in the middle of Sanya's yacht industry chain. The first is a yacht club with its own dock operated in the form of a club, with supporting hotels, entertainment and real estate industries. The membership fee is high and it is mainly for high-end customer groups. Representative enterprises include Sanya Hongzhou International Yacht Club, Yalong Bay Yacht Club and Mid-Levels Yacht Club. The second is the leasing of docks. Marine tourism companies with leisure and vacation as their main business, mainly engaged in yacht leasing, marine sightseeing, marine fishing, deep-sea boutique diving, night tour of Sanya Bay, professional offshore fishing, marine wedding parties and other projects. Their cost is close to that of the general public, mainly for low-end customer groups, and representative companies include Kangda Yacht. The third is physical stores that sell branded yachts, and representative companies include Jiepeng Yacht and Wooden Man Yacht. The downstream of the industrial chain is the yacht supporting chain, which is the related support and auxiliary industry of yachts, mainly including yacht dock construction, yacht storage and transshipment, yacht-related insurance and finance, yacht culture communication and policy guarantees. This link is also the weakest link in Sanya's yacht industry chain. Among them, the planning and construction of public docks, ships and yacht maintenance centers are relatively few, which is a typical feature of Sanya. In 2019, Hainan's yacht industry pioneered a "national first", that is, Hainan Province carried out a pilot project for temporary open water approval for overseas yachts, becoming the first pilot province in the country in this field. An administrative license at the national level, which was originally under the responsibility of the Ministry of Transport, was handed over to the Hainan Provincial Government as a pilot for implementation. The implementation of this policy has reduced the approval level and greatly simplified the approval process. Sanya has a large demand for foreign yachts entering the country for free travel, but currently it is restricted by relevant policies, and the convenience of entry needs to be further improved under policy optimization. In 2010-2013, the number of yachts entering Sanya each year once reached more than 100, ranking among the top yacht port cities in the country. In recent years, the business of foreign yachts imported in the form of leased goods has basically stagnated. In 2015, the number of visits by free travel yachts entering the country decreased by 30% year-on-year, showing a downward trend year by year. One of the important reasons for this problem is the high customs guarantee (the guarantee amount is 43.65% of the yacht value), which has led to a large number of foreign yachts going to duty-free countries in Southeast Asia and no longer choosing to travel to Hainan. It is worth noting that with the establishment of Sanya Yacht Service Co., Ltd. supported by the government, this policy barrier has been effectively alleviated. The company is dominated by the core business of entry guarantee and continues to develop comprehensive yacht service business oriented to customer needs. We are committed to helping yacht customers reduce operating costs. We provide comprehensive service guarantees such as entry and exit procedures, customs bonds, dock berthing, maintenance, and leasing for foreign yachts traveling to and from Sanya. We provide high-quality and convenient "one-stop" entry and exit services for foreign yachts entering Hainan for self-driving tours, exhibitions, events, and cultural exchanges. We provide loans, value assessments, ship licenses, trusteeships, waterway services, sea rescue, maintenance, training, driving companionship, leasing, information consultation, event guarantees, and regulatory equipment leasing for domestic yachts. Sanya does not have a truly standardized public yacht terminal, which has a great restriction on the popularization of yacht culture and mass consumption. Taking Sanya Banshan Peninsula Sailing Port as an example, the supporting facilities, safety supervision, functional zoning, and management and operation of the entire terminal are relatively lacking. Because the enterprise has a demand, it is granted to the enterprise, but no agreement is made with it, resulting in the enterprise's monopoly of the area and a high price barrier. According to CCYIA survey data, the average individual membership of Shenzhen and Sanya yacht clubs is more than 1 million RMB, with the highest membership price appearing in Sanya, reaching 1.78 million RMB; the average corporate membership is 2 million RMB, with the highest also in Sanya, reaching 3.48 million RMB. Berths in various parts of the country range from 150 to 350 RMB/foot/month, with Sanya having the highest price, reaching 465 RMB/foot/month. Due to the shortage of graduates from relevant professional colleges and fierce competition in the industry, there is a huge gap in the yacht industry, whether it is technical talents, sales talents or service talents. There is an even more serious shortage of professional talents in yacht driving, repair, maintenance, service, yacht terminal construction, marine life-saving facilities, equipment construction, etc. From the perspective of the tourism industry as a whole, Sanya has a certain "talent enclave" effect. Taking foreign talents in the tourism industry as an example, on the one hand, due to the long application time for the first work visa and the influence of the destination countries for talent competition, some potential talents who have been recruited to Sanya's tourism enterprises eventually lost to other destination countries; on the other hand, due to the limited development of the industry itself, some foreign talents favored by emerging tourism enterprises lost to other cities in China after being jointly trained with universities on the island. These two points make Sanya a talent "enclave", resulting in excessive waste of local education, enterprise, industry and administrative costs. And this "enclave" effect is also reflected in the yacht tourism industry. Some yacht companies reported that most of the mature talents trained by the Tropical Ocean College have been lost to the outside of the island. This is even worse for Sanya's yacht tourism, which is already in a talent gap. From private to shared, from luxury to mass, from single point to chain, the development of yacht tourism is highly dependent on the all-round evolution of the yacht industry. According to the principle of "actively exploring and trying first" given by the State Council to Hainan, Sanya took the lead in the country to carry out practice, actively innovate regulatory models and methods, and achieved positive results in water opening, port supervision, bonded warehouse construction and industrial service guarantee. However, in order to achieve the relevant goal of Hainan's construction of a free trade zone, that is, to build Sanya into a regional, international and high-level yacht tourism center, deeper reforms are needed on the supply side. This study believes that only by comprehensively developing under the "four-in-one" pattern of yacht industry, yacht culture, yacht community and yacht tourism and creating a yacht tourism ecological community can the healthy and orderly development of the supply side of Sanya's yacht tourism industry be ensured, and then meet the tourists' basic, expected and exciting needs at different levels, and gradually increase, and finally promote the industry to enter a virtuous cycle of development, thus setting a good example for the development of domestic yacht tourism, namely, the breakthrough integration of the "yacht industry"; the promotion and penetration of yacht culture; the soil cultivation of yacht communities; and the comprehensive upgrading of yacht tourism. Author: Zhao Kuan, postdoctoral fellow at the China Tourism Academy, now works at Fosun Tourism Group; Zhang Shuai, lecturer at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hainan Tropical Ocean University. Originally published in the first issue of China Tourism Review in 2020, with some content deleted.According to statistics from CCYIA (China Communications Association Cruise and Yacht Branch), the current scale of my country's yacht industry is about 4 billion yuan. There are a total of 12,000 berths and 2,700 open-air moorings on land in the country. According to the 9,067 yacht berths and 3,285 yachts moored in the CCYIA sample survey in 2017, there are about 5,500 yachts moored in the country, and on average, about 270,000 people own a yacht. The per capita ownership is still far behind that of developed countries. Among the 3,285 yachts actually moored in the sample survey, the number of sailboats is 1,089, accounting for 33.2%, which is an upward trend from 28% in 2016. According to the forecast of the American Yacht Manufacturers Association, the scale of China's yacht market will reach about 53.6 billion yuan in 2020, of which the number of leisure ships will increase from 3,000 in 2012 to more than 100,000. According to the latest statistics from the Hainan Provincial Coast Guard and Port Office, the province has established 8 yacht manufacturing companies, 271 yacht sales and service companies, 39 yacht clubs, and 3 yacht-related professional training institutions. 14 yacht docks (sailing ports) have been built, with 1,658 berths. There are about 800 yachts in the province, and the number of yachts owned and the number of foreign yachts entering and leaving the country are among the highest in the country. Sanya's yacht industry started with the construction of the Hongzhou International Yacht Club in 2008. Over the past 10 years, it has achieved considerable development and has become the most representative city in Hainan's yacht industry. At present, Sanya has three dedicated yacht docks, including Hongzhou Yacht Dock, Banshan Bandao Sailing Port Dock, and Yalong Bay Yacht Dock (temporarily closed). There are nearly 60 registered yacht-related companies and 4 yacht clubs. According to the statistics of the Sanya Yacht and Sailing Association, as of December 31, 2017, Sanya's major yacht docks had a total of 1,148 berths, parking a total of 425 yachts of various types, and more than 4,000 direct yacht employees. Since the Volvo Ocean Race was held in Sanya for two seasons in 2012, grand events and exhibitions such as the Hainan Island Round the Island Regatta, the 2017-2020 Clipper Round the World Yacht Race, and the "Hainan Tian Shengyan" have been successfully held in Sanya. my country's yacht terminals and clubs are mainly concentrated in the following four regions: the Pearl River Delta region centered on Shenzhen, the Yangtze River Delta region centered on Shanghai, the North China coastal region centered on Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Shandong, and Hainan (centered on Sanya). Among the top 20 Chinese yacht cities selected by CCYIA, the Pearl River Delta region includes Shenzhen, Xiamen, Guangzhou, Zhuhai, Zhongshan, Shantou and other places, among which Shenzhen and Xiamen ranked first and second in the country in comprehensive scores. The Yangtze River Delta region includes Shanghai, Zhoushan, Ningbo, Suzhou, Wenzhou and other places, among which Shanghai ranks third in the country in comprehensive scores. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Shandong regions include Qingdao, Dalian, Tianjin, Rizhao and other places. Hainan includes Sanya and Haikou. According to CCYIA's assessment, among the top 20 yacht cities in China, Sanya ranks fourth in comprehensive ranking, second only to Shenzhen, Xiamen and Shanghai. It ranks high in natural environment, government management competitiveness and yacht service competitiveness. However, due to the limitation of industrial structure, Sanya lags behind cities in the Pearl River Delta and other places in terms of yacht industry competitiveness. Sanya's yacht economic effect is single, and no effective yacht economic industry chain has been formed. It is basically based on the operation of yacht tourism projects, with some basic repair and maintenance services. From the upstream of the chain, since Sanya's manufacturing industry does not have the industrial support environment for yacht production, the upstream yacht manufacturing industry in Sanya has a weak foundation. The middle of the industrial chain is the yacht circulation chain. The enterprise model in Sanya is mainly manifested in yacht club operation, yacht sales and leasing. From the perspective of business form, there are three types of enterprises in the middle of Sanya's yacht industry chain. The first is a yacht club with its own dock operated in the form of a club, with supporting hotels, entertainment and real estate industries. The membership fee is high and it is mainly for high-end customer groups. Representative enterprises include Sanya Hongzhou International Yacht Club, Yalong Bay Yacht Club and Mid-Levels Yacht Club. The second is the leasing of docks. Marine tourism companies with leisure and vacation as their main business, mainly engaged in yacht leasing, marine sightseeing, marine fishing, deep-sea boutique diving, night tour of Sanya Bay, professional offshore fishing, marine wedding parties and other projects. Their cost is close to that of the general public, mainly for low-end customer groups, and representative companies include Kangda Yacht. The third is physical stores that sell branded yachts, and representative companies include Jiepeng Yacht and Wooden Man Yacht. The downstream of the industrial chain is the yacht supporting chain, which is the related support and auxiliary industry of yachts, mainly including yacht dock construction, yacht storage and transshipment, yacht-related insurance and finance, yacht culture communication and policy guarantees. This link is also the weakest link in Sanya's yacht industry chain. Among them, the planning and construction of public docks, ships and yacht maintenance centers are relatively few, which is a typical feature of Sanya. In 2019, Hainan's yacht industry pioneered a "national first", that is, Hainan Province carried out a pilot project for temporary open water approval for overseas yachts, becoming the first pilot province in the country in this field. An administrative license at the national level, which was originally under the responsibility of the Ministry of Transport, was handed over to the Hainan Provincial Government as a pilot for implementation. The implementation of this policy has reduced the approval level and greatly simplified the approval process. Sanya has a large demand for foreign yachts entering the country for free travel, but currently it is restricted by relevant policies, and the convenience of entry needs to be further improved under policy optimization. In 2010-2013, the number of yachts entering Sanya each year once reached more than 100, ranking among the top yacht port cities in the country. In recent years, the business of foreign yachts imported in the form of leased goods has basically stagnated. In 2015, the number of visits by free travel yachts entering the country decreased by 30% year-on-year, showing a downward trend year by year. One of the important reasons for this problem is the high customs guarantee (the guarantee amount is 43.65% of the yacht value), which has led to a large number of foreign yachts going to duty-free countries in Southeast Asia and no longer choosing to travel to Hainan. It is worth noting that with the establishment of Sanya Yacht Service Co., Ltd. supported by the government, this policy barrier has been effectively alleviated. The company is dominated by the core business of entry guarantee and continues to develop comprehensive yacht service business oriented to customer needs. We are committed to helping yacht customers reduce operating costs. We provide comprehensive service guarantees such as entry and exit procedures, customs bonds, dock berthing, maintenance, and leasing for foreign yachts traveling to and from Sanya. We provide high-quality and convenient "one-stop" entry and exit services for foreign yachts entering Hainan for self-driving tours, exhibitions, events, and cultural exchanges. We provide loans, value assessments, ship licenses, trusteeships, waterway services, sea rescue, maintenance, training, driving companionship, leasing, information consultation, event guarantees, and regulatory equipment leasing for domestic yachts. Sanya does not have a truly standardized public yacht terminal, which has a great restriction on the popularization of yacht culture and mass consumption. Taking Sanya Banshan Peninsula Sailing Port as an example, the supporting facilities, safety supervision, functional zoning, and management and operation of the entire terminal are relatively lacking. Because the enterprise has a demand, it is granted to the enterprise, but no agreement is made with it, resulting in the enterprise's monopoly of the area and a high price barrier. According to CCYIA survey data, the average individual membership of Shenzhen and Sanya yacht clubs is more than 1 million RMB, with the highest membership price appearing in Sanya, reaching 1.78 million RMB; the average corporate membership is 2 million RMB, with the highest also in Sanya, reaching 3.48 million RMB. Berths in various parts of the country range from 150 to 350 RMB/foot/month, with Sanya having the highest price, reaching 465 RMB/foot/month. Due to the shortage of graduates from relevant professional colleges and fierce competition in the industry, there is a huge gap in the yacht industry, whether it is technical talents, sales talents or service talents. There is an even more serious shortage of professional talents in yacht driving, repair, maintenance, service, yacht terminal construction, marine life-saving facilities, equipment construction, etc. From the perspective of the tourism industry as a whole, Sanya has a certain "talent enclave" effect. Taking foreign talents in the tourism industry as an example, on the one hand, due to the long application time for the first work visa and the influence of the destination countries for talent competition, some potential talents who have been recruited to Sanya's tourism enterprises eventually lost to other destination countries; on the other hand, due to the limited development of the industry itself, some foreign talents favored by emerging tourism enterprises lost to other cities in China after being jointly trained with universities on the island. These two points make Sanya a talent "enclave", resulting in excessive waste of local education, enterprise, industry and administrative costs. And this "enclave" effect is also reflected in the yacht tourism industry. Some yacht companies reported that most of the mature talents trained by the Tropical Ocean College have been lost to the outside of the island. This is even worse for Sanya's yacht tourism, which is already in a talent gap. From private to shared, from luxury to mass, from single point to chain, the development of yacht tourism is highly dependent on the all-round evolution of the yacht industry. According to the principle of "actively exploring and trying first" given by the State Council to Hainan, Sanya took the lead in the country to carry out practice, actively innovate regulatory models and methods, and achieved positive results in water opening, port supervision, bonded warehouse construction and industrial service guarantee. However, in order to achieve the relevant goal of Hainan's construction of a free trade zone, that is, to build Sanya into a regional, international and high-level yacht tourism center, deeper reforms are needed on the supply side. This study believes that only by comprehensively developing under the "four-in-one" pattern of yacht industry, yacht culture, yacht community and yacht tourism and creating a yacht tourism ecological community can the healthy and orderly development of the supply side of Sanya's yacht tourism industry be ensured, and then meet the tourists' basic, expected and exciting needs at different levels, and gradually increase, and finally promote the industry to enter a virtuous cycle of development, thus setting a good example for the development of domestic yacht tourism, namely, the breakthrough integration of the "yacht industry"; the promotion and penetration of yacht culture; the soil cultivation of yacht communities; and the comprehensive upgrading of yacht tourism. Author: Zhao Kuan, postdoctoral fellow at the China Tourism Academy, now works at Fosun Tourism Group; Zhang Shuai, lecturer at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hainan Tropical Ocean University. Originally published in the first issue of China Tourism Review in 2020, with some content deleted.