Growing attendance of foreign visitors
During four days the French town La Grande Motte located near Montpellier on the Mediterranean coast has been the capital of the multihull boat industry.
After a first show last year in Lorient (North of France) this unique boat show dedicated to multihulls was organized in La Grande Motte and the town became the favorite place of multihull supporters.
16 000 visitors came to see more than 50 multihulls from 20’ to over 60’. The strong increase of the number of visitors compared with last year’s exhibition shows an effective demand for this category of boats.
35 % of the guests were foreigners. The exhibitors have been positively surprised to welcome visitors from everywhere in Europe, from Russia, Asia and North and South America and they have been impressed by the visitors’ quality and turnout. Business was being done, evidenced by the involved conversations on busy stands.
The “Multihull Boat Show” is an important and inescapable tool for the shipyards to sell boats and is representing the showcase of Multihulls.
A foreign catamaran dealer explained: “I do not waste my time explaining the advantage of a cat. All the visitors are already persuaded about this way of cruising and they are in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere, where they have time to discuss and sea trail the boat.”
The positive mood was matched by the stats. More than 50 French and Foreign journalists from general and nautical magazines, websites, radio and television came to report about the unique multihull event.
Fountaine Pajot, the serial catamaran builder with the longest tradition, presented four sailing and two power catamarans at the show. During their press conference the shipyard mentioned their attention to new ecological technologies like solar panels and hydro generator.
Among the biggest boats of the show, the Italian power catamaran Mattia VG 62, who combines performance, safety, comfort and elegance.
The worldwide largest catamaran builder showed five boats within the new Lagoon 560 and a Lagoon 380 with a painting on the floats representing Polynesian boat regattas created by the French artist Marc Rambaud.
One of the novelties of this Multihull Boat Show has been the Sunsail 444, built by the South African shipyard Robertson & Caine. The particularity is the second cockpit in front of the saloon with an access from the interior. During the show the French sailing competitor Kito de Pavant became “godfather” of this new born catamaran in the Sunsail range. Mr. Stephan Rossignol, mayor of the town of La Grande Motte was the “witness of this baptism”.
Other novelties of the show have been the trimaran Access 6 from the French shipyard Tricat, the high performance catamaran TS 54.2 built by X Light Catamarans, the French – Tunisian Aventura 33 with a pleased design and grey and orange interiors as well as the Edel 33 in its Mediterranean version with two inboard motors and a confortable cruising equipment.
Near the entrance area the visitors got “back to the past” by seeing three trimarans and one catamaran from the 70ties and 80ties belonging to the association “Golden Oldies”. Going further the visitor came “back to the future” and stunt under a huge electro-solar trimaran called “Solar Odyssey”, an experimental boat.
In the exhibitor village the visitor could be informed by designers, equipment companies, insurance companies and credit institutes as well as about French and Tunisian marinas.
20 % of the entry fee of the show will be given to the association Watever, taking care about people in poor regions and helping them to find a solution to work with boats. For example, in Bangladesh people built boats with jute instead of fiber glass and boats are used as floating hospitals and schools or used to transport the children to their school. Unicef is cooperating with Watever for this program.
The city of La Grande Motte was connected by a floating pontoon specially built for the Multihull Boat Show. Down town large pictures showing boats and the sea decorated the streets and also conferences about regatta sailing and the biodiversity of the sea were organized. On the beach kites were flying and the visitor could use a “stand up paddle” to see the multihulls from the water.
M2Organisation, the boat show organizer thanks the city of La Grande Motte, the Hérault region, the company SONY, the cars BMW, the television FR3, the boat builder of Smartboats and the catamaran transport company Multitrans for their help.