AS ONE°15 MARINA IN SINGAPORE CELEBRATES ITS 10TH ANNIVERSARY, CHAIRMAN ARTHUR TAY IS FOCUSED NOT ON CELEBRATING BUT ON GROWING HIS NET WORK OF MARINAS AROUND THE WORLD.
AS ONE°15 MARINA IN SINGAPORE CELEBRATES ITS 10TH ANNIVERSARY, CHAIRMAN ARTHUR TAY IS FOCUSED NOT ON CELEBRATING BUT ON GROWING HIS NET WORK OF MARINAS AROUND THE WORLD.
As ONE°15 Marina, Sentosa Cove prepares to mark its 10th anniversary in September, what have been your key learnings over the past decade?
We know members are our priority, so we are looking to regenerate some of the assets we have. We are looking at better pontoon layouts. We are looking at redesigning the marina to let superyachts move to the centre.
For members, we are looking at what else they want. I think they want more events, better rooms, better variations of F&B outlets, more lifestyle activities for them and for their children.
We are always finding ways to improve ourselves so that the club stays relevant to the members and they will patronise the club more often.
Before ONE°15 Marina, SUTL focused on the export of consumer goods and had never been involved in yachting. What spurred the company to own and operate a marina?
I was a businessman in the consumer goods businesses and personally I love lifestyle and am very sporty. I play lots of sports. Combining these gave me the courage and confidence to look at where Asia is lagging behind.
With the super high net worth growth in China and also in Southeast Asia, I felt two prominent things were lacking: one is the healthcare industry and another is a cry for lifestyle pursuits.
A lot of us are travelling to go skiing, going on Safaris, exploring vineyards and so on, and I felt that the marina lifestyle and marine tourism would definitely grow to a very high level.
Why did you decide to expand the network of ONE°15 marinas?
Over the past 10 years, I felt the marina infrastructure in Asia needed someone to take the lead. I am very driven and have gained a lot of confidence in this industry. Economy wise, I am confident that there are a lot of marinas to develop and untapped potential in the cruising waters around here in Southeast Asia, especially in Thailand and Indonesia. Our team are looking to grow more so we can create a cruising ground and a network of marinas.
We would like to plant the ONE°15 flag to ensure that whenever we build a marina around here, yachts are happy to come alongside and to have a stopover. The brand assures quality and efficiency.
We are not just looking around here. We are also looking at Sri Lanka where they are building a big waterfront port called Colombo Port. In the Maldives, the government is also inviting us to develop their big marina there so we are looking at it.
Recently, we have been aligning with parties from Hong Kong, Korea and Japan, which I met in the recent Singapore Yacht Show and they saw ONE°15 and said, ‘Wow, I didn’t know it’s a serious business’. They wanted to move from being a small-town sailboat marina and asked if I could help them to do it. It has been very encouraging.
So, as well as creating new marinas, you’re also looking at overhauling existing marinas and yacht clubs?
Our strategy is two-pronged. Some areas like Indonesia don’t have proper marinas so we’ll build them, while some need a facelift and more integrated planning. We’re looking at doing both at the moment.
Will your new marinas have the same look and feel as ONE°15 Marina in Singapore?
This is an interesting point as we can’t replicate this model everywhere. All marinas that we are appointed to develop must have different personalities. I can’t do a Sentosa Cove marina in Bali or in Colombo. They must have their own unique attractions, which I have myself defined one by one carefully because I understand Asia.
Some are going to be hotel marinas, some resort marinas, some are commercial shopping mall marinas, some are river marinas for cruising. In Cambodia and Vietnam, we are looking at creating those cruising boats where they do a long stay and they do a city tour as part of the marina attractions. They are all very different and I am so excited. They are all very good in their own business models.
The ONE°15 Puteri Harbour in Johor Bahru, just across the Causeway from Singapore, is one of your first overseas marina projects. How is that developing?
We’ve been working very closely with our partners over there. We’re really excited to release our iconic hotel marina there and to show the different styles of marinas we are doing. It’s going to be very different from Sentosa.
I know Malaysians will like to come to our club to use the facilities, but how will they spend? I always tell all my team that we must know what the consumers want. The Malaysian consumers might be different from those in Singapore.
We are looking at beefing up safety and security at the marina, and even making it into a hub for super cars because a lot of Singaporean cars and Malaysian cars don’t have a hub. We’ll also probably do a boat show there eventually, a big one for Malaysia.
What about the ONE°15 Brooklyn Marina in New York, which is 9,500 miles away from Singapore?
It was a one-off opportunity that was proposed to us. They asked us to be the financer, but I twisted it around and asked, ‘Why don’t I own it?’ And surprisingly, the landlord, the Brooklyn Bridge Park, does not mind a foreign partner taking a major share of the marina. They understand our new concept and they had heard of ONE°15, so that was a unique situation.
New York is one of the world’s best-known cities and we just wanted to plant the ONE°15 brand there to show our shareholders and members that ONE°15 is going global and that our brand concept and values are going as far as America.
If Brooklyn is a one-off, are you planning to focus first on Asia?
No, not really. We are hungry, so we are looking at Australia and we have already been to Europe. I have all my consultants and brokers going and saying, ‘Look, we want to plant our ONE°15 brand here’.
We want to change Europe to bring more Asians to patronise the marinas, but with an Asian hospitality twist so I think everybody benefits. Europe wants more Asian tourists and yachting enthusiasts to use their marinas.
It can be as simple as offering Asian cuisine, but it could also be offering sailing. Sometimes you don’t get the Chinese or Asians to learn sailing here, but because of the beautiful Mediterranean waters and the view and the landscape, they might take up sailing there, so we may provide diving, sailing and superyacht chartering. Maybe they will even get married there!
I know all these things are lacking. I know what Asian tourists want to go over to Europe for – to spend time experiencing European culture, European heritage, museums and coastlines, which are very different from Asia.
Have you seen other marinas try to develop a global brand?
Marinas in Western countries are used more for recreation, just really putting sailing and motor boats there, but I think it’s more than that. I am going to change that business model. Marinas in the world must be uniquely different and should be enjoyed by all international people who love sailing, boating, yachting.
So, do you imagine ONE°15 growing like a global hotel network?
We will enlarge our membership all around the world under the ONE°15 brand. I think we need to have more marketing. The trouble with European marinas is that they don’t promote to Asian people.
It can be as simple as changing the language on brochures or websites into Thai or Chinese, so I know what you provide if I come to your marina in Italy, in France or in Spain. Before, they didn’t do that. I think I’ve taken the leadership to do it. Why are other marina consultants not doing it? Maybe they are not very focused or they don’t have the strategy, but we do.
Of course we have to be very sensitive about the details. The local marina club that we have, let’s say, in Italy, we need to work out what priority is given to the members there. If Asians are members of ONE°15 clubs in Asia, what privileges and limitations do they have in marinas in Europe?
Would you align with reciprocal marinas and yacht clubs?
Yes, but not all marinas will be membership-driven. Some are hotel resort driven, where we pick them up at the airport and escort them. For the high-end customers, we will provide limo services and – don’t let them get distracted or go anywhere else – bring them to the marina, rent a megayacht and go cruising around the Mediterranean, like around Croatia.
I think affluent Asians are now demanding and expecting different kinds of pursuit. They are not trying to go to Rome or Milan or London to go shopping … or they still are generally, but we’re looking at the more discriminating Asian travellers.
You’ve been at the helm of ONE°15 Marina since it launched. How big a part does it play in your life and how do you and your family – who are downstairs as we speak – engage with the yachting lifestyle?
Initially, my family was like many others who weren’t exposed to yachting, but since I started this marina 10 years ago, they’ve learnt a lot. They enjoy going yachting with me. We dive, we go fishing. When the infrastructure is laid out, I think it’s very natural for people to want to try yachting. You must have it all in place.
What are your thoughts on the Singapore Yacht Show, which ONE°15 Marina has hosted since its inception in 2011?
For seven years, I worked with my partner from Singapore Yacht Events. We work very closely and every year we do checks and balances to see how we can improve and in which areas we’d like to do more. You can see that the show has kept improving.
The industry and all the big yacht manufacturers want Asia to succeed and they’re supporting by paying to attend the exhibition, so it’s very important that they endorse and they give us feedback on how we could do better for them. We have to listen to them.
Retrospectively, they also listen to us about what Asians look for. The definition of the yachting lifestyle is not always clear. Why should I buy a superyacht and will it be a liability? We have to share with them. We use it for corporate, for family. Maybe in the Western hemisphere, high net worth people use it for retirement, but here I don’t think so.
But the young Asians are spending now. They are very different from my father’s time, where it was a sin to spend on big superyachts, but this is not a fear for the young ones who inherited the wealth. They are more educated and they demand more lifestyle, rather than working to death. That’s history. The new ones are pursuing and demanding more.
