Sellers of luxury yachts are banking on a falling euro and design styles with a Chinese twist to keep sales afloat at the city's most prestigious annual boat show, which got under way yesterday. The Gold Coast Boat Show, which runs until tomorrow, is tempting bearers of big bucks with 70 vessels worth a total of HK$1 billion. And while the lure of luxury is high on the agenda, this year's purveyors of ocean-going opulence have injected a dose of fiscal reality into the equation. Among the prized potential possessions on offer at the Gold Coast Yacht and Country Club in Tuen Mun is the SL106, a 33-metre-long beauty from Italian shipyard Sanlorenzo that comes with an eye-watering price tag of HK$93 million. Traugott Kaminski, the yard's chief executive of China operations, admits it is "not cheap", but calls the exchange rate between the Hong Kong dollar and the euro - about a fifth less than a year ago - a "great advantage". The floating villa was "made in Italy with Chinese customers in mind", Kaminski said, noting that while Europeans preferred longer cruises, day trips were de rigueur for the Chinese and as such customising vessels to suit their preferences was important. The boat boss conceded the mainland Chinese market for luxury yachts had seen a "little slowdown" as a result of Beijing's anti-corruption drive. But a recovery was under way, he said, after he sensed a more relaxed mood during the Lunar New Year in February. Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan each made up a third of his business, he said. Jeffrey Chan, marketing director of local firm NextWave Yachting, had seen his fair share of local interest. "Maybe it's the hikes in the Hang Seng Index," he said. A dozen people, most of them expatriates, had bought yachts to use as homes this year, he said. "You'd be hard-pressed to find any land-based homes with a price tag of HK$4.7 million." The show drew 1,500 visitors on its first day, organisers said.
