TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands E-mail from Boatyball

I received this from Boatyball today:

Dear Colleen,
We sent out an email earlier in the week announcing that we plan on providing advanced reservations this upcoming season in the BVI. We have received some great feedback and we appreciate how responsive our user base has been.

We wanted to clarify a few points. First, we plan on piloting this new feature to make sure it works properly. The number of users during the pilot will be extremely limited. We currently plan on doing this in October and November. Once we have tested the system we plan on opening it up to more users.

We have had boaters express concern that we will partner with one or two charter companies and provide them preferential treatment. That is not our intention! We plan on making this service available to all charter companies.

Part of what makes the BVI special is the ability to go where the wind blows. We strongly believe that the same day reservations should constitute the majority of reservations made in the BVI and for this reason we want to keep the number of advanced reservations to a small percentage.

In order to make sure the advanced reservations service does not have a negative impact on boaters we have structured the program so that we can closely monitor the number of advanced reservations.

Our goal is to improve the boating experience for all boaters. We appreciate your feedback. If you have any questions or concerns please let us know. Cheers, The BoatyBall Team

Hmmm, sounds almost like a politician writing something.

It’s a way of getting free ads.

Waking up at 7am every morning of vacation after drinking the night before sounds like a great plan. Who needs to relax when you can scramble to reserve a mooring ball every morning 😀

If you book your charter through boatyball soon you will get special priority and can book the day prior. I have zero doubt this was always the plan.
G

I agree with George. The economics of BB did not make sense unless they went this route or got control of so many balls that they would raise the price

It's outrageous for an entity to control a large number of balls and be in the broker business. Especially a foreign business.

Boatyball should chose which business they want to be in.

The mooring ball reservation business serves no useful purpose, so they should jettison that and become a charter broker competing on a level playing field.

I do enjoy being able to grab a ball for the night but I think now's the time to practice anchoring and retrieval skills. Benefits are no charge for anchoring so more money for beer and food as well as keeping your skills up.

Is Boatyball a sponsor here at traveltalk?

No. All TTOL sponsors are listed on the TTOL sponsors tab.

I had actually wondered the same thing....

If they are a sponsor, they are listed there. Period. We have no interest in that company. That one thread was closed down because a member was advocating illegal actions against the company, which we will not allow our board to be used to advocate.

Hi Carol, speaking for myself, I didn't mean anything underhanded or such...was just thinking that if they were to become a paying sponsor it might help their image a tad around these parts. They sure get a lot of publicity here...perhaps it's time they pony up.

They mostly get beat up here. Can't imagine why they'd want to support a forum that continually puts them down so aggressively. To be honest, the BB conversations here make me want to stop sponsoring and participating in such a negative forum.

Me too.

Actually they get both positive and negative but the negative is higher and with good reason for the charterer is the one that has to deal with this during their vacation.
BB is a business and they’re going to do what’s ever necessary to keep growing, so get the thoughts out of your minds about being “Fair”.

Sail445, How about being honest. Would that be a reasonable expectation?

What do you think?

What did I say that isn’t honest, would you like to elaborate?

Missed my point. Sorry . The message was to you. You said don't expect them to be fair. So my question to you was how do you feel about expecting them to be honest. Please read my post again with this context.

My mistake, they’re selling a product so they’re going to be truthful about the positive aspects and try to convince you on negative aspects.

The latest email that I received this morning. Looks like they are partnering up with Virgin Charter Yachts. You will get 2 free nights on BoatyBall's if you book a Virgin Charter Yacht through the Boatyball website.

Christmas in July!


Virgin Charter Yachts is helping kick off the new BoatyBall website by offering a special 10% discount on any Virgin Charter Yachts charter reserved through BoatyBall! In addition, if you use the new Boatyball website to book your charter with Virgin Charter Yachts you will receive 2 free nights on moorings in the BoatyBall program during your charter.

Virgin Charter Yachts specializes in bareboat powercat charters and they offer some of the newest and nicest powercats in the BVI with upgrades not normally seen on 'typical charter' boats including: Volvo IPS engines, Wolf and Subzero appliances, ice makers, water makers, teak decks, etc.

BoatyBall has chartered with Virgin Charter Yachts and we know you will love their yachts and exceptional customer service experience!



It might be "Christmas in July", but the Holiday charter season is just around the corner and inventory is already becoming limited!

Holiday and Spring Break dates are filling up quickly. The 10% discount on Virgin Charter Yachts and 2 free nights stay are good through August 12, 2019.

If you have not booked your boat for 2019/2020 then select the button below and start planning your next BVI adventure!

I got that email also, probably just the beginning.

Not sure I agree with that...at any rate, if it's so horrible why do "they" spend so much time here? I can't think of the last time I came here and it didn't show "them" logged in (and I check in a lot.)

Hmmmm....

Yesterday, Colleen posted this extract of an email she received from BB:
QUOTE: We have had boaters express concern that we will partner with one or two charter companies and provide them preferential treatment. That is not our intention! We plan on making this service available to all charter companies. END QUOTE

ONE DAY later, I receive an email from BB announcing their partnership with Virgin Charter Yachts... Am I missing something here??

Oh well....

Michel Benarrosh
sailonline.com

Up to this point I've observed the conversations about Boatyball but been pretty neutral. However their use of their "service" as a back door way into becoming a charter broker has crossed a line with me. No longer are they just a couple of guys trying to help charterers but rather have used this conversation as a way of publicizing their fledgling charter brokering business. I have a year before our next charter but at this point plan to avoid their mooring balls and hope this great idea of theirs has faded away by then.

They have the power to give free moorings to those that book through them. The commission is rich enough to do this.

Remember when boatyball said they are doing this because they care about the boaters.

What a load of horse####

It’s a business and they’re moving up from the shovel to the bulldozers

Lol

This is really funny...I am sure if I called Virgin Charter out of the blue they would give me at least a 10% discount or a gas credit or some other special. I have never ever paid retail for a boat in the BVIs. I am working on a booking right now with another company and am at a 15% discount.

And as a bonus I get 2 free BB nights? Pinch me as I must be dreaming...

Kinda curious how it would work...if I book now can they block off a ball for me at say Cooper one my first night out in February?

BB makes it up as they go. So who knows and why bother

I hate to quote myself but literally just got this from Virgin Yachts....in the truth is funnier than fiction category

🎅🎁 Merry X-Mas in July!🎄😎The holidays are only 22 weeks away and we have limited availability remaining for Christmas, New Year's and Spring Break weeks! Offering 10% OFF for any new bareboat 2019/2020 charters booked before the end of July. Mention code JULY10 at time of booking.

Charter companies used to give a one time 2 weeks for the price of one during September and early October and then later 10 days for the price of one

Once again, We can count on boatyball to publish misleading advertisements.

I am curious if Virgin created any special offers to help launch boatyball’s entrance into the charter broker business.

Who here would pay big $$$ to BB for their charter? What have they done to earn our trust?

So who approached who for this "partnership" do you think?

Virgin, DYC, Horizon, CC, Conch and Warrens beloved TMM lol

Peter - did they approach BB or did BB approach them?

BB is in the habit of stating who there partners are. Even if the partner is not aware.

I don't believe that they approached tmm. Do they list tmm as a partner?

you asked what I thought, not what is real, I was trying to get into the Boatyball way of thinking