A superyacht cost estimation tool

Abstract

Yachts have significantly grown in number and size the past decades. The superyacht business has grown along and the number of superyacht builders has increased. In previous decades, potential customers were queuing for their superyacht to be build. The result was that yacht builders were able to set the price of a yacht. Nowadays there is much more competition amongst superyacht builders and therefore it is harder to sell yachts. The increased competition has introduced significant price negotiations in the world of superyachts. As yard it is important to estimate the costs of a superyacht early on in the sales process, to be able to negotiate healthy and realistic prices with a customer. Due to the inherent customization of superyachts estimating the costs is challenging as there are many unknowns during the estimation and it is time consuming. Currently there are no tools existing, that help yards estimate the costs of a superyacht in the early phases. Therefore, the research objective of this thesis has been: to develop an accurate cost estimation tool in order to help designers and yards with the newbuilding cost estimations of superyachts during the design phase. At the beginning of this design phase, almost all characteristics of the superyacht are unknown. At the end of this phase brief specifications are known which contains several main yacht characteristics. During the phases after design, the tool should function as a basis. The maximum allowed inaccuracy of the cost estimations during the design phase is 15 percent, but of course a higher accuracy is pursued. The defined research objective has led to the main research question: how to develop this cost estimation tool?