Plans for the future
Cannes Yachting Festival announces bold plan to grow the sailing yacht sector at the show.
13 September 2018
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On the opening day of the 41st Cannes Yachting Festival, a press conference was held to announce plans to move all sailing yachts to Port Canto for the 2019 show.
Sylvie Ernoult, Director of Cannes Yachting Festival, spoke of the organisers desire to contribute to the growth of its French and international customer bases by becoming the world’s largest sailing yacht show.
“For the past three years, we have seen the Vieux Port become very overcrowded both on land and in the water. We have gradually tried to relieve the congestion in the Vieux Port by using the spaces available at Port Canto, for example through the partial move of the Toys space in 2017, which this year was installed in its entirety on the quayside of Port Canto,” explains Sylvie Ernoult. “On the other hand, in recent years our exhibitors and customers have told us of their wishes to have larger exhibition areas, both in the water and on land. This led us to rethink the Cannes Yachting Festival overall for its 2019 edition. This project was made possible after a long consultation with our exhibitors and with the support of the City of Cannes, the CCI Nice Côte d’Azur and many other partners”.
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A dedicated space to showcase monohull and multihull sailing, which will be able to accommodate over one hundred sailing boats, will be installed at Port Canto in 2019. With over 400 metres of quayside for monohulls and over 450 metres for multihulls, Port Canto offers room to grow the sailing yacht display. Conveniently, this will free up more space in the Vieux Port for a dedicated motor yacht and superyacht exhibition, giving shipyards and equipment manufacturers larger areas to exhibit their products. This major reorganisation is part of a desire to serve the interests of motor and sailing yacht exhibitors, to give them greater visibility and reinforce the legitimacy of the Cannes Yachting Festival.
“Historically, sailing has always been highly represented at the Cannes Yachting Festival, with more than 20% of the boats on display being sailing yachts.
This is a much higher proportion than the global market share of this segment,” explains Sylvie Ernoult. “It was therefore a natural and obvious choice for us to reconsider the layout of the show and to move the sailing sector to the other side of the Croisette, around ten minutes (by water shuttle) from the Vieux Port.”
This complete reorganisation of the show will therefore facilitate:
- A significant increase of the exhibition space available to offer visitors a global overview of yachting,
- A better geographical segmentation and new organisation by type of boat, with the Vieux Port reserved for new motor boats,
- A better representation of the brands,
- Improved exhibition conditions,
- A simplified visitor route for buyers and visitors,
- A wider and larger audience.
Since the 2018 Cannes Yachting Festival opened on the 11 September, sea lovers, yachting fans and veteran visitors have filed in to admire the best of the international offering of motor, sailing, monohull or multihull, with 638 boats on display.
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