Season pricing for charter fleets: low, mid and high done properly

Every charter fleet has a rate card, and most rate cards have a quiet scandal in them. A date that falls between two seasons. A shoulder week priced differently on the website and in the contract. A yacht whose summer rate was raised in the brochure and not in the spreadsheet. None of these is deliberate. All of them are expensive.

This is a note on how to set up season pricing so that it stays correct once the enquiries start arriving.

Start with the seasons, not the prices

Before any figure is set, agree the calendar. A typical Mediterranean fleet thinks in terms of low, mid and high season, sometimes with a peak band for certain weeks. Your own calendar will depend on where you operate and what your clients want.

Write the season boundaries as exact dates, for every year you are quoting. Avoid phrases like "from mid June". Decide:

• What day does each season start and end, inclusive or exclusive?
• Are charters billed by the week, the day or both?
• What happens to a booking that spans two seasons?
• Are there special periods (festivals, regattas, holidays) with their own rates?

A boundary that exists only in somebody's head will, sooner or later, be disputed.

Handling charters that cross a boundary

This is the commonest source of arguments. There are three reasonable approaches.

1. Rate by start date. The whole charter takes the rate of the day it begins. Simple to explain, occasionally generous or harsh.
2. Split by day. Each day is charged at the rate of its season. Fair, but harder to calculate by hand.
3. Fixed weekly slots. Charters run Saturday to Saturday, and each slot has one price. Easy for everyone, but not always possible.

Choose one and state it in your terms. Whichever you pick, apply it to every yacht and every quote, so no one has to remember which rule applies to which boat.

Setting the rates

Pricing is a commercial judgement, and nothing here replaces it. But some practical disciplines apply.

• Start from costs and your own history, not from what the competitor down the pontoon is doing. Knowing your fixed costs, crew, insurance, berthing and maintenance tells you what you cannot go below.
• Look at your own occupancy. Which weeks fill without effort? Which sit empty? Prices should respond to demand you can see, not demand you hope for.
• Keep the structure legible. A client should be able to see why high season costs more. Three or four bands are easier to defend than twelve.
• Be careful with extras. State clearly what is included, and what is billed on top: fuel, provisioning, dockage, gratuity, VAT or other taxes where relevant.
• Do not discount by habit. If everybody who asks gets ten per cent, the discount is the price. Decide in advance who may offer concessions and within what limits.

Keep one source of truth

The central discipline is that a rate is stored in one place, and everything else reads from it.

Where rates live in a spreadsheet, a website, a PDF and an email template, they will diverge. Test this: ask three people on your team for the high-season weekly rate of one yacht. If the answers differ, you have a problem worth fixing before the season starts.

Practical steps:

• Keep the rate card in the yacht record or a single shared sheet.
• Generate brochures, quotes and website prices from it rather than retyping.
• Date and version each change, with a note on who made it and why.
• Review after any price change that every document in circulation matches.

Check the chain from quote to invoice

A rate affects a quote, a contract and an invoice. Each of those should show the same figure, and each should be derivable from the rate card.

Do a quick audit at the start of each season. Take one booking from each yacht and trace it: rate card, quote, contract, invoice. Do they agree? Is the deposit calculated on the same basis? Are currency and taxes handled the same way throughout?

Review while the season runs

A rate card is not set and forgotten. A review in the middle of the season, using real figures, is more useful than one in the winter, based on memory.

Questions to ask:

• Which yachts and weeks sold fastest? Might they have commanded more?
• Where did enquiries stall at the price? Is it the rate or the presentation?
• What was the average gap between enquiry and booking in each season?
• How did revenue and occupancy compare with the previous period, yacht by yacht?

Keep currencies separate in any comparison. A season reported in euros for one yacht and sterling for another tells you very little until each is read on its own.

A pre-season checklist

• Season dates written out for the whole year, with boundaries stated.
• Rule for crossing charters agreed and written in your terms.
• One rate card per yacht, dated and versioned.
• Extras and inclusions clearly listed.
• Who may offer concessions, and how much, written down.
• Quotes, contracts and invoices spot-checked against the rate card.
• A date in the diary for a mid-season review.

Where Yachtbase fits

Yachtbase stores season prices on the yacht record and reuses them in bookings and quotes, so the figure a client sees is the figure on the rate card. The analytics views show revenue and occupancy per currency, which makes the mid-season review rather easier. Setting the rates remains, of course, your job.

In short

• Define seasons as exact dates before setting any price.
• Pick one rule for charters that cross a boundary and apply it everywhere.
• Set rates from costs and your own occupancy history.
• Keep the rate card in one place and generate other documents from it.
• Audit one booking per yacht from quote to invoice at the start of each season.
• Review mid-season, in each currency separately.