Cruising Pace

What does it take to build Southeast Asia’s premier yacht event? We spoke with Singapore Yacht Show’s founder Andy Treadwell to find out more about the evolving yacht industry and his plans for its 10th anniversary celebrations in March 2020.

- Stacey Rodrigues

Almost a decade ago, the Singapore Yacht Show (SYS) had just 12 boats at the marina and the waterfront playground that we know today as the Quayside Isle and W Hotel locale was merely a construction site.

But that didn’t stop Andy Treadwell, founder, and CEO of SYS organizer, Verventia, from ensuring that the right wind was in his sails to take the show from strength to strength.

In fact, come March 2020, SYS celebrates its 10th anniversary at One°15 Marina Sentosa Cove and is expecting a whopping 16,000 visitors.

“We launched the Singapore Yacht Show in 2011 as a sister event to the Monaco Yacht Show, when my job was to develop new business around the already hugely successful Monaco show,” says Treadwell. “It was created at the request of the industry, just after the global financial crisis and everyone was looking for a new market – so all eyes were beginning to focus on the big latent market in Asia.”

Singapore was the perfect spot to seed a new, burgeoning yachting community in Southeast Asia. While the show has become a must for high net worth individuals to see and be seen, behind the celebrity heavy, glitzy cocktail soirees is a brewing business with economic opportunity for Singapore and the region.

Treadwell, events and yacht show veteran, has long touted Singapore as a “bright spot” and a hub for yacht sales in Asia. “We are seeing increased levels of interest, not just from our traditional visitors from Southeast Asia, but with each year, visitors are coming from further afield – mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, and even Australia and New Zealand. There were some tremendous sales last year and all our biggest clients did really well,” says Treadwell.