Jazz provides 24-hour-a-day customer service, from yacht repair to offshore activities.
If you can imagine spending time on your luxury yacht while cruising the crystalline waters of the Balearics without having to worry about any aspect of the boat, from pick-up point to the minute you drop it back, then quite possibly you are using the experienced and qualified services of Jazz Marine.
With their offices located on the infamous Paseo Maritimo, running parallel to Palma Port, Jazz Marine has grown over the past five years to become a point of reference for many people who come to the island wanting to fulfill their nautical dream. The company’s strategy is to provide “360° support”: taking this customer dream, and turning it into reality by helping select the right choice of yacht with the appropriate options, guiding through the entire purchasing process, and giving full time assistance where necessary. Members of the Jazz team have six languages between them and are proud to be able to communicate with confidence within their European market place. With the number of boats in their care growing year by year, this is testimony to the 24-hour-a-day customer orientated service that they provide from yacht repair to offshore activities.
Charles Guthrie, Jazz Marine’s Founder and CEO, affirms “The only way to operate is train your crew to always be on top of things, and maintain your boats well. We believe in quality with good performance at the most reasonable cost possible. The ship builder may be the one to build the boat, but the owner/operator is the one who will have to live with it, charter it, maintain it and repair it throughout its lifetime, and that is where we come in.”
Charles goes on to talk about his expansion plans within the service department, using his team of multilingual maintenance engineers, and equipping them with a fleet of fully equipped vans which include the availability of a dedicated boat for sea assistance in the event of emergency. He explains that this service is not unique to Ferretti group yachts but is available to all boat owners. Speed is also of the essence and in order to minimise the time the yacht is out of use, a newly acquired building in Portixol provides general storage for spares, for immediate access and availability.
Jazz offices are located on the Paseo Maritimo , running parallel to Palma Port.
Jazz Marine’s commitment to keeping up with demands and ahead of its competition is further strengthened by introducing new and avant-garde equipment in order to expand the infrastructure and services available. This year they will be introducing a revolutionary machine which is able to enhance the performance of the yacht propellers. This is just one of many projects currently running at Jazz Marine.
An equally important part of the company is the dedicated sales division for new and second-hand boats. Alongside its second-hand boat activity, Jazz are the official dealers in Mallorca of Pershing – one of the Italian Yacht group Ferretti’s nine brands. With an extensive network of brokers in the Balearics, and the international environment, clients can be sure to have access to the best possible options available in the market.
In addition to these existing services, Jazz Marine also has a wide range of boats available for charter, and if it is your own boat that you are considering chartering, they can provide full assistance in making sure that all legal documentation is up to date and meets the licensing requirements and local Spanish tax laws.
If you would like more information, please visit the Jazz Marine website.
On Friday night, the Florida Yacht Brokers Association presented Ann Landry of Northrop and Johnson with its Charter Broker of the Year Award for 2009. That’s Landry displaying her plaque in the photograph at right, sitting alongside Charter Marketing Director Terry Hines of International Yacht Collection.
Editor’s Note: Kim Kavin is an award-winning writer, editor and photographer who specializes in marine travel. She is the author of six books including Dream Cruises: The Insider’s Guide to Private Yacht Vacations, is editor of the online yacht vacation magazine 
One of the things I heard a lot of talk about at last week’s Antigua charter yacht show was discounts. And not in the way I’ve been hearing about them during the past few months. As you know if you follow my blog, deals and discounted rates have been flooding the crewed charter market for a little more than a year now, as yacht owners try to adapt to the financial pressures of the continuing global recession. Brokers have been pushing for deeper and deeper discounts on behalf of charter clients, and though not all yacht owners have obliged, a good number have. The talk on the docks last week was different because, instead of all the brokers saying they wanted to negotiate the biggest discounts possible, I began to hear some brokers saying that if they saw a yacht offering more than a 15-percent discount, they would think twice before trying to book it for their client at all. One broker from 
I snagged an exclusive interview yesterday afternoon with Mark Elliott, a 20-year veteran charter captain who is now a yacht sales and charter broker for
Report from Miami: Cautious Optimism
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010I’m just back from the Miami International Boat Show, where traffic on the docks was a bit light to my eye but reportedly composed of serious shoppers as opposed to tire kickers. I’d like to put what I heard about the charter market into broad context for you first, before diving into details farther below.
Leading mid-range and large-yacht builders such as U.S.-based Sea Ray and British-based Sunseeker told me that they were selling enough new boats to consider the show “good for the current economic climate.” That’s a heck of a lot better than their tune at this time last year, when sales were all but nonexistent.
The brokerage market, too, seemed to have an air of hope in Miami. I spoke with the captain of a 112-foot Westport who told me that his motoryacht was now the least-expensive for sale in its class and getting serious offers from potential buyers. That, to him, indicated that the brokerage market has hit bottom and may be starting to turn around. His sense jived with my conversations with multiple sales brokers, who argued that now is the time to snap up the best remaining deals, as the brokerage market is poised to begin a slow but likely rebound.
With all that said, the sense that I got from the half-dozen charter fleet managers I met in Miami is that the charter industry, too, may be experiencing cautious optimism for the first time in nearly 18 months. The market for crewed charter appears to still be mixed according to many specifics that I heard, but in general, charter brokers’ phones are ringing again.
I was told that a good number of the charter inquiries coming right now are for the Bahamas during next month’s Spring Break and the Easter holiday in April. In years past, those dates would have been booked months ago and current calls would be for “last-minute” charters during the summer in the Mediterranean, but, as the managers put it, at least the calls are coming.
In terms of pricing, every charter fleet manager I spoke with confirmed for me that price negotiations are the order of the day, and that perhaps as many as two-thirds of the charters being booked today are coming at negotiated price reductions, extra days aboard, or some combination of the two. Some yacht owners are refusing to negotiate their prices at all (and some are still finding clients who book boats at full price), but the yacht owners who are willing to negotiate appear to be giving at least 10 percent to 15 percent off published weekly base rates.
Other charter yacht owners are giving more, but as quietly as possible. Charter fleet managers at several companies told me about cases where discounts were given as high as 40 percent to 50 percent off published base rates, but qualified their statements by saying the circumstances were particular to the specific yachts and clients involved. In at least one case, the charter client was required to sign a confidentiality contract in order to receive the sizable discount.
What does all this mean for the upcoming high season in the Western Mediterranean? It’s hard to say. I’m keeping my ear to the ground.
Stay tuned.
Tags: brokerage, charter, Miami International Boat Show, optimism, sales
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