The number of duty-free boats considered as luxury have not been defined by the authorities, and anyone can bring an old yacht and operate with this loop-hole saying its a luxury boat. So, the challenge is that the locals who build the boats paying duty to everything face the difficulties in selling them, as these boats brought under the luxury tag from Egypt, Greece, Thailand and Indonesia are not luxury at all. However, they make it happen and get a ticket to operate, while they sell cheaper than the local boats.

The main reason is that, even if there is a local in-front and face of the brand, the foreign ownership is the one who benefits from it. The income that the local boat owners and operators ought to get are snatched by foreign owners. Another reason is that with the luxury tag, they are selling the boats at a much lower market value, which ultimately forces us to lower the price as well to stay ahead of competition. At the end of the day, we suffer by not being able to properly maintain our boats and survive during the off-season. Third reason, I believe will affect us in the long run, is that most of these boats are operated by foreign brands who sells B2C directly. At the end of the day, a huge majority of the market is acquired by them by offering lower prices and special discounts. B2B is affected greatly and the market prices we have been maintaining for a long-term goes way below expectations

It affects a lot and becomes a major challenge. They are operating here for a few years, and going to another destination. Its like a stranger coming into our home and breaking all our house rules. They dont care about our future. They do whatever they want and they even dont bother about the future of the industry, and are simply killing our business. It appears that their operation cost is cheaper than ours. But, my question is why is it cheap? I am sure they also use diesel for the engines, not seawater. However, from the internet sometimes we see their rates much cheaper than ours. So, are we missing something? Or something is going very wrong? Tax authorities should keep an eye on them.

I guess there are different ways to manage it and we have to approach in those different ways