Cannes Yachting Festival 2025: notes from the pontoons with WAMA Yachts

The Cannes Yachting Festival 2025 closed on Sunday 14 September. Our representatives spent the week there alongside WAMA Yachts, as they had in 2024. To be plain about it: we attended and did not exhibit. We walked, talked, listened and took far too many notes.

This is not a results report, and you will not find figures here. We would rather give you an honest account of what a working week at the show feels like and the habits we think are worth keeping.

The show in two harbours

Cannes is an in-water show, and it is split. The Vieux Port is the home of the motor yachts; Port Canto, a short distance along the bay, shows the sailing yachts and day boats. Free shuttle boats link the two for ticket holders.

The practical consequence is that no two days are the same shape. Some conversations happen on a gangway with someone in a hurry; others on a deck with coffee and a view. The festival is large, and the organiser describes more than 700 boats afloat, so a plan matters more than stamina.

What struck us, again, is how physical it is. You are not at a stand behind a table. You are on a pontoon, in the sun, in the wind, with your phone in one hand and a brochure in the other. Anything that depends on a laptop and a stable connection will quietly not happen.

What we spent the week doing

Our role was to be useful alongside a team that works in the business of yachts every day. That meant:

• meeting many professionals from brokerage, charter, management and the supply side;
• discussing possible partnerships, some immediate and some for next year;
• discovering inspiring projects, from builders to small operators with a clear idea of their niche;
• watching, with professional curiosity, how a sales team handles a long day of short conversations.

We came away with a good list of people we would like to speak to again, and a few ideas about where our own work could be more useful. We are not going to describe those conversations in detail, since they belong to the people we had them with.

Three things the format rewards

1. Short, clear introductions

On a pontoon, nobody has time for a speech. The people who made the best impression were those who could say, in two sentences, who they were, what they offered and what they were looking for. Practise the two sentences until they sound unrehearsed.

2. Material that opens on a phone

Most of the exchange of information at a show happens on a phone. A brochure that is a heavy file, or a link that asks the recipient to log in, will not survive a busy afternoon. Documents that open at once, look tidy and can be shared in a tap are worth the preparation. Protected media kits and brochures, which we released earlier this month, are meant for exactly this kind of moment: a link you can send from the quay, rather than a file you have to find.

3. A record kept as you go

By the third day the conversations blur. The professionals who seemed least stressed were those who recorded each contact immediately, with one line on what had been asked and promised. It is an unglamorous habit, and it is the one that decides what happens in October.

What we noticed about the follow-up

A show is a funnel with a very wide mouth and a narrow neck. The wide mouth is the week itself. The neck is the first fortnight afterwards, when each contact either becomes a conversation or fades.

The honest observation is that the neck is where most businesses lose people, not for lack of interest but for lack of process. A reply has to be personal enough to be read and quick enough to be relevant. When a team is exhausted, tired templates and forgotten attachments become the norm.

Here is a simple structure for the week after Cannes:

1. Monday. Gather every contact into one list, whatever the source.
2. Tuesday. Sort into three groups: act this week, act this month, keep warm.
3. By Friday. Send a personal message to the first group, and a short note to the second.
4. The following week. Hold a fifteen-minute team review: who has been contacted, who has replied, what is blocked.

Anyone can do this with a spreadsheet. A shared inbox and a client record that links each person to the yacht they asked about makes it quicker, especially if more than one colleague was involved. That is the thinking behind our shared inbox and CRM, and the show reminded us why it matters.

For charter operators

Cannes is not primarily a charter show, but it is where many charter professionals meet brokers, managers and owners. The useful outcomes for a charter business tend to be relationships rather than bookings: a new agent who will recommend you, a manager who needs a partner for a region, an owner thinking about putting a yacht into charter.

Those relationships are slow, and a note two months from now that refers to something specific from the show carries real weight.

For brokers

A broker's week is about presentation and trust. The best moments were ordinary: a clear spec sheet handed over without fuss, a straight answer to an awkward question, an offer to arrange a viewing at a time that suited the buyer. Nothing complicated, and all of it learnable.

For yacht managers

Managers rarely get to talk to many peers at once. A show is a chance to compare notes on crew, suppliers and owner expectations. Keep notes on those too, since they are as valuable as any sales lead.

What we are taking back

Our list is short and practical.

• Plan for the phone. Anything we send should work on a small screen in poor light.
• Record immediately. One line, on the day.
• Follow up in days, not weeks.
• Keep the promises small enough to keep.

We are grateful to the team at WAMA Yachts for having us alongside them again, and to the many professionals who gave us a few minutes of their week. Cannes will be back in September 2026; we intend to be better prepared.