Welcome to another episode of our serious SLG meetups by Super Luxury Group, where we connect with some of the most interesting players in the luxury market. My name is Alvaro, and today we'll be having with us a very special guest. His name is Akiles, and he's the founder of Yatsing Greece, where they specialize on yacht sales and charters. In this conversation, we're going to be talking about his journey and how he has built a successful brand that connects with Yats and uses in Greece and all over the world.
Akiles also will be talking about the current yacht trends and how the transitions are taking place after the summer. Enjoy. What's happening, Akiles? Hello, how are you?
How are you? We've had so manyrents for the amazing introduction. So you're telling me not too long ago that the weather over there right now, is amazing. Yeah, actually it's a bit cloudy, it's very tropical.
Let's say the last heat wave before autumn comes. We have 35, 36 degrees, a couple of the last two days and tomorrow is going to be 33 and Sun, which was a perfect day to go to the beach. But in either case, I was making a quick introduction about yourself, how you became a very successful entrepreneur in the yacht industry. You started building an amazing brand, Yats and Greece, like it could not feel better.
I want to know a little more about your story. Why don't you share how you get to where you are today, how you end up building such incredible brands. in Greece with my family and my friends in the Greek islands. As you, I'm sure you've heard like Nick and I, Santorini, Paros, they are in the complex of me, Chris, Little Sea, Cloud, the silence.
They're very close to Athens. Like with a boat, you can be there in three to five hours with a plane, you can be there in half an hour, for two minutes. And I was young and I was watching all these yachts like since the age of my early teeny years. And I was fascinated by them.
They're incredible. Like beautiful, the design, the practicality, the power, the freedom they can give. So I started searching the reading about boats as a hobby. And to be honest, it was not my first profession.
In the beginning, till like the last seven years, I was in the restaurant business and was working in the food and beverage, like side of the back of some very nice restaurants in Athens. But I started doing yacht photography as a hobby and I started my yacht in Greece page back in 2015. And it was going really well. People were liking it.
They saw my content. It was very original because I didn't start copying, let's say photos from CPR, photos from other brokers. I was just taking photos. I was watching the yachts in front of me and I said, well, that's a nice boat.
That's a nice boat. And then people started sending me requests. So that's so nice. We love it.
Maybe we want to rent a boat for a day to go next on the beautiful island called the Rina. That's like completely deserted without inhabitants. It was amazing, like blue, turquoise waters. And I started meeting yacht owners, yacht companies.
And then I knew in order to get to the next level to do big charters, weekly charters for 30, 20, 30, 40 meter boats, you need to be part of a group of a company that is well established in the market. They have a very good name. They have a good back office. They're members of me, it's the Mediterranean Yodra Association.
So then I started searching and I want to go obviously into the yacht sales. And then unfortunately enough, I joined the Parcel Yoting team. So it's like a family, not just a company. So then I could like take my clients, show them the boat, show them the whole like a service that they want, like one stop shop for sales, charters, maintenance, everything.
I love that, you know, and definitely this is the word, connecting, connecting the people that love the same thing, which are the yachts, chartering. And this is the beautiful story about how you became so successful. Because when you do something from pure passion, when you do it as a hobby and you really do it because it's something that fits into what you really want to do, then it becomes naturally a success. And this is the beautiful thing about your brand.
And this is why I got so connected quickly because you're sharing that passion is that originality. It's, you know, giving the people what they want, which is information about yachts, about the destination. And you're doing it through the new technologies, you know, you're utilizing all social media in a very efficient way. And this is leveraging, leveraging what we have today.
You also mentioned that you are shifting towards the sale, like the one stop shop for any enthusiast for yachts. And now obviously with the summer season towards the end and that already ended what the transition, because a lot of people think that when the summer is over, there is no more business. What are some things that you're currently working on? So we have these people that they have the budget, of course, and they would like to get into the yachting.
I would not say hobby, they like the yachting industry. They want to buy a boat. Some of them they want to buy in charter. They want to make some money so they can at least make the yachts expenses so they can have, let's say, free vacation with their own boat.
Some want to keep it strictly private. So now in October, November, we have people that are actively searching for a boat. So now they're searching for their enquiring. I take them to the ICDC boats.
They can fly with them to other countries like Russia, Italy, Spain, COVID and God forbid, of course. Yeah. And they're searching because if someone buys now from November, let's say, March, then they have all the time they want to drive the boat, do the underfouling, do the service, small or an extensive refit. They want to change the interior, new pillows, new upholstery, to get it ready for the season of the summer.
The whole process. Exactly. So in May 2021, they can start their vacation or their rental according to their needs. So it's a 365 day season for you.
Exactly. Exactly. And also the very, very, let's say the top sellers of chartering, like our top sellers of parts of all, like 42 to 50 and they're getting booked early from February March. The boats are completely booked.
All the summer is because the brokers are sending us requests because they know that the crew is amazing. The chef is amazing. The boat is beautiful, well maintained. The captain knows where to take them with the weather is bad, knows where to hide the boat if it's windy.
So they're getting chartered, almost fully booked till March, April, they're going to be fully booked for the high, high season months of June, July, August. Yeah. Nobody wants to wait until the last minute and then. The good things are done.
Yeah, of course. So that's incredible. And what is your demand coming from? What do you see the most people coming from?
So all over the world, we have a lot of people from America because they love Greece. They love the country. Yeah, we have a lot of people from all over the world. We're so happy and so blessed to have people that they want to explore our country, to come and see our culture, to see the natural beauty of Greece.
Then I see that's very, when you're getting the Greek sea, it's not hot and warm. It's a bit greasy, but it's like a medicine. You're hungover, you don't feel well, you get inside the sea, you out of the sea, it's like, boom, you're cute. I have to connect you Achilles with a friend of mine who actually last week was asking me for some help with the few of you in Greece.
And I was thinking that obviously they want to have that yacht chartered experience. So there you go. First of all, thank you. So how is the connection between homes and yachts?
Because one thing that I've noticed is that every yacht owner, they usually have from one to multiple nice homes around the world. So the quality of that lifestyle, of keeping that consistency with the design and the type of experience from the home to a yacht. How is it? How do you relate it?
So we have the yacht owners that really have beautiful houses like either in the north or the south part of Athens, and they have also a house in the islands, like Paros, Mecconos and Di Paros. But they want the boat. Some of them, they can have a smaller boat, like 40, 50 feet. So one day they can jump on the boat with their friends into an island hopping.
And it's like two people that can even sleep for two or three days on the boat. Because Greece is like, what happened to Greek? I say Polynesia, like the French Polynesia. The Aegean Sea has like more than 50, 60 islands.
More like if you count the islands with people that are not staying on the island. So even though they have beautiful houses, they want to have the exchange of the boat, because it gives them freedom. And especially people who want to buy bigger boats, like from 20 meters and above, that they can sleep up to 12, 14, yes. They start to 6, 8, yes.
They're 25 meters and you can go with 6 cabins to 12 or 14, yes. So these people, even though they have an amazing house, and they have multiple houses, as you mentioned before, they want to have a boat and disconnect. Because on the boat, you can go to Greece, that you cannot go with your car. You cannot go on food.
You can like there's a big cliff. And under the cliff, you can see a beautiful, like in Paxos and Di Paros in the Aeonean Sea. A beautiful, beautiful, request water. So they are buying boats because they're having fun with them.
It's like their personal notification time. The psychiatrist, you know, the boat, you forget your problems. Okay, I see it, I see it. So I mean, you definitely explained it well.
And at the end of the day, one of the big things I see with you and your brand is that you're connecting all these enthusiasts about yachts around the world that go to Greece. Now how, because we have the yachts in for Lauderdale that obviously can cancel this year, but... Is it something that you usually come to? Yes, the Miami boats, actually.
But I usually focus on the European yachts, because my clients, they want to travel to Europe. If they want to buy a boat, they're not going to go so far. Because you can find the same boats and it's easier to transport them from Miami to after Greece. Some boats that cannot even do that cross Atlantic travel, because they're not allowed, because maybe it's going to be a bad weather, it's going to be very dangerous.
So you need to load them to ship them in a big cargo ship that can cost from like 100 to 300, 400, 1000 dollars. So it's a big, let's say, that's up to the price of the boat. It's a bit expensive, it's a bit expensive. The same boat, even newer in the European market.
So that's why we focus on the can, yachts. And the monoco, yachts. We can take out a boat, actually, we show them monoco, yachts now. We were like, focusing a lot on them.
What are some things that have been going on in Greece, some cool experiences that you want to share with us? I haven't had yachts, we had people that they rented two or three yachts and they went to a very nice isolated island and they put the priest there and they put a nice set up with torches and a very nice table and a lot on does, a table so they have the chef. Yeah, so you had the two boats. It was like a very private wedding, like for 450 people.
So you have like two yachts, big yachts, like 40 or three yachts, they were all on board and they started departing from the morning till the afternoon and at night. So you can have like the breakfast wedding set up, super private and super exclusive and super custom. And I want to connect a little bit of the yachts on the vacation side because you asked them before. So you have some like a group of friends that are renting a nice villa in Bighorn, for example.
And they rented like five bedroom villa with a nice pool and they go to all these amazing big clubs and they spend the fortune because they love you, they're having fun, they're having like the bottles of alcohol or food and they spend like they stay four hours and they spend like four, five, six, eight for a club. You can like have a rest day, get out of your villa and take a yacht for the same amount of money, even less from your friends and go for 10 hours, to the next Thailand of Rinya, Setogian, Delos. And have an amazing experience, like not so massive, you know, with your friends, with your girlfriend, with like a few even better, you want to invite them the same day, the next day. And this is like one of the exponents that you can combine with, beautiful villa and a beautiful yacht for a day.
But in all sense, what are some takeaways and some things that you want to share with the audience throughout your career experience with doing something from your heart? What are some takeaways that you want to share? I want to share them that if they can afford to do a yacht vacation, they should do it. I mean, they should visit either the Greek islands or go to the Caribbean even and it's not expensive.
I want to because it's misunderstood. Yachting vacation is expensive. Yeah, if you rent a 30, 40-meter boat, it's gonna be expensive. You can do a very nice 40-feet sailboat with six, eight people and it's gonna cost you as a master for a star, let's say, hotel.
They should do it because it's absolute freedom. If they want to talk to you, they want to connect, where can they find you? First of all, they can find me on my yacht's increase page. As I said, I connect the yachting at two years and they can ask me whatever they want.
And of course, my company that I'm working for, I've got a serious request, they're gonna ask me and I'm gonna transfer the request to the company, I'm gonna see it with everyone in the company to find the best yacht for them, for their needs, but at the best of possible price. Beautiful. Thank you very much. It's been an absolute pleasure having you here today.
I hope to see you soon. I'll take your word about jumping into Greece. I'm waiting for you. Maybe before going back to my yacht, I'm gonna make a big stop over there.
Perfect. But anyway, second list. Always a pleasure. I hope to see you soon.
And take care. Take care. Bye again. And thanks again for everybody tuning in today.
We hope you enjoyed it. And remember, embrace its beautiful success in life. My name is Alvaro and I'll see you next time.