The global luxury private motor yacht sector has experienced a giant step forward in design innovation and quality in the past 10 years and the future looks even more exciting. What is it about this sector that has enabled it to transition into this new era?
Once the domain of the super yacht industry only innovative hull designs, a dramatic increase in the quality and luxurious nature of interior fit outs across the whole range of motor yachts and design customisation to suit virtually any individuals desires and tastes are now the norm.
And this is being witnessed across a broad spectrum of the luxury motor yacht sector starting with even the smallest vessels in the range of many manufacturers.
Pleasure boating has never offered so much choice and technological advancement to the boat buying public and the world’s leading brands are continually striving to find the ‘next new thing’ and beat the competition with new product development.
The goal and desire of all modern boat manufacturers is to create a perfectly functioning, highly liveable, safe and luxurious nautical platform for boaters to use and enjoy without any thought of the planning and design initiatives that have gone into each vessel created.
Brand’s like Maritimo have been at the forefront of luxury motor yacht design and innovation for many years and its current ‘new generation’ of models are amongst the most futuristic and advanced on the market nationally and internationally.
And in Maritimo’s case much of the innovation, technological advancement and design stereotype breakdown has come from boaters themselves.
One person who has firsthand knowledge of the time and effort that goes into the behind the scenes work to create the perfect luxury motor yacht is Maritimo’s lead designer Tom Barry-Cotter.
Boat design and manufacture is in Tom’s very DNA, being the son of legendary Australian boat manufacturer Bill Barry-Cotter, with close to 4000 vessels to his credit over a career spanning six decades. The current UIM XCat world champion driver Tom has an intimate knowledge design and performance.
“Boasters use boats much more than designers do, so the input of the customer is very important in successful boat design and manufacture and it is vital that designers do not assume anything,” says Tom
Ultimately buyers know what the features are that a boat needs it order to make it revolutionary. The challenge for Tom and others like him is to be able to provide all the desired design features without compromise. And in many cases the ‘light bulb’ moment suggestions actually come from the customers themselves.
Tom says the secret to Maritimo’s international success, and indeed that of all successful motor yacht manufacturers, is a keen customer focus.
“We undertake a lot of market research, do countless customer focus groups, gauge feedback from boat shows and that all feeds into the design process,” he said.
“We design a brief of what are the key specifications and features our customers and the broader market want before any concept development begins.”
However, not all design briefs are meant to create something revolutionary. Revolutionary designs are more few and far between. Take propellers for instance. This is the perfect example of a revolutionary design, but its design has been more evolutionary than revolutionary in the past 100 years with the exceptions of some findings, such as surface propeller designs.
The Maritimo design philosophy is actually more evolutionary. “We strive to continuously refine and improve the design process,” said Tom. “We continuously review any design issues and create solutions that turn those issues into a strength and then look to continuously improve. ” It is with the regularity of our constant efforts to refine and improve that we create a solution with simplicity and uniqueness that is revolutionary.”
Maritimo is about creating exciting design, robust engineering and world leading sea worthiness and that is what makes the brand unique.
The X series sport yachts with their revolutionary aft beach club accommodations are the perfect example of Maritimo leading the way in design internationally.
Customer feedback about having proximity to the water and a desire to have separate areas for all family and friends to share while onboard was crucial in the evolution of this unique hull configuration.
With design teams like Maritimo’s being heavily invested in creating future enhancements across the complete range of sport yacht and flybridge motor yacht models and there sure to be some exciting advances revealed in the months and years ahead.
The winners is this new order of highly competitive design and manufacturing are boaters themselves and for them the future is looking extremely bright.
