As mentioned last month, visitors to the annual yacht event in Miami Beach in February are in for several changes. Now we can show you what some of the most significant ones are. All told, they’re meant to make Yachts Miami Beach more welcoming, and easier to navigate. Arguably, they’re meant to make it more upscale, too.
For 28 years, the show “face” has been a mix of bows, transoms, and profiles stretching along Collins Avenue. Several ramps led down temporary docks to take you to the exhibitors. As the show grew, so, too, did the challenges, of accommodating new production boats alongside new megayachts, and brokerage buys amid the same. More ramps led to more docks that wound around the Indian Creek Waterway. Even for seasoned visitors, it wasn’t always easy to find the exhibitors you were looking for, or for exhibitors themselves to get around.
This coming February 16 to 20, Yachts Miami Beach will have five distinctive, dedicated entrances. As illustrated above, an information booth and prominent way-finding graphics will accompany each. Gone are the small signs that display a ramp number. Gone, too, are the small signs indicating the shuttle-bus pick-up and drop-off spot, replaced by much easier-to-spy banners. Though this particular illustration doesn’t reveal it, Yachts Miami Beach will further group new yachts separately from brokerage ones. (The changes don’t affect the displays at the Island Gardens Deep Harbour marina on Watson Island, however.)
Show Management and the International Yacht Brokers Association, which co-own Yachts Miami Beach, hired a specialist to create the new look. It’s EDSA, a planning, landscape-architecture, and urban-design firm. The Florida-based company is responsible for high-profile creations such as Atlantis in The Bahamas, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and the reconstructed Four Seasons resort in Nevis. On its website, the company states, it strives to create “distinctive and inspiring environments.”
The list of yachts on display at Yachts Miami Beach should become available in the next few weeks. In the meantime, tickets are already on sale. As we’ve mentioned previously, for the first time, there’s an admission fee. General admission (ages 16 and up) is $20. VIP packages that include valet parking and complimentary food and drinks in the lounge aboard the Floridian Princess, docked at the show, start at $215. See the ticketing website for full details.
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