Paradise Voyages

This particular concept is the spawn of my wayward adventures into the cruise liner world when I was like 20. You may remember that a highschool buddy and I somehow ended up getting considerable support together for a $35 million cruise ship terminal. It got crushed when we discovered that the lines were so tightly consolidated they can stonewall terminal builders and will not grant terms to them until the terminals are actually built and then drastically reduce prices. Nearly all of the terminals in the US are built by local governments that end up getting Royally fucked.

There's a way to create better experiences for people on small ships piloted by the bearded and/or retired. Moorings runs the chartering world, but there's an interesting, unperfected market between personally chartering a yacht and a Disney cruise.

Slicing up a ship that's on the larger side of a private charter and is thus hard to keep booked - say sleeps 10-30, but isn't big enough for the big companies to play with has margins that can exceed 50% when the cabins are booked individually rather than chartered straight up. We're talking about something like $40k/week for one boat.

Here's a seasoned charter broker that lists all their ships and prices: http://www.ed-hamilton.com/

Here's an example of ready-made booking software: https://fareharbor.com/. 3-5%, no fixed costs, total interoperability, and easy fleet management.

There are a couple of people that I would like to get involved here if they're interested. One is the guy that runs the party boat business in Austin - austinrentalboats.com. He's been getting ready to sell and do something with slightly less alcohol involved. The other is a family friend that retired a couple years ago from maritime law - universally loved and helped build a powerhouse firm.