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"Tourism that works" --- the Flamenco marina

Selling the paraphernalia for upper-end tourism

article and photos by Eric Jackson

Tourism, especially where it is most successful, is a niche industry. Its more mass production aspects --- the big beach strip hotels, the large and unspecialized cruises, casino towns, theme parks and so on --- tend to be the most vulnerable to shifts among a fickle consumer base and constantly need expensive makeovers. Some of the more successful tourism businesses market to much smaller groups of customers, who can  be quite loyal if the experiences they buy satisfy them.

Lou Sola runs Evermarine, a high-end fishing boat dealership at the Flamenco marina, next door to Bennigan's. The company sells Bertram, Tiara and Ferretti boats, with a Bertram dealership territory that includes Central America, Panama, Colombia and a number of the Caribbean islands.

"This marina is a good example of tourism that works," Sola said, contrasting it with the ever more chaotic scene on Via Veneto as tourism that doesn't work so well.

The power boats that Evermarine sells, with the 29 to 48-foot Tiaras on the lower price end, the more luxurious Bertrams and the "ultra-luxury" Ferrettis, are not cheap. "We can't have inventory," Sola explained. First of all, there is waiting list to buy the new boats that Evermarine sells, and the pricetags can run into millions of dollars at the higher end. Mostly the company works the major international boat shows and takes orders. Mostly the customers are corporations that "will put a boat here and hire us to maintain it." Even so, he noted, "most of the boats out here [in the marina] are not from here."

So how much does that give his tourism niche in common with the sailboat yachtie sector?

The big difference is that people who use Bertrams and the other vessels in which he deals rarely live on their boats. They come down here for a few days to a few weeks for fishing trips. A lot of the sailboat crowd likes to winter here in what amount to their floating homes. The reduction in tourist visa stays from a renewable 90 days to a renewable 30 days might affect the latter sector, but Sola doesn't expect it to have much of an effect on the people who use the boats he sells.

For Sola, the tourist development model to follow was pioneered at Los Sueños in Costa Rica, where "in the middle of nowhere, the built a world class marina." Well, actually not in the middle of nowhere, but in a particularly rich fishing area. As the marina became more popular, it's upscale customer became interested in living in Costa Rica full-time or for many months of the year, sparking a condominium and hotel boom around the original fishing-oriented development. And Panama, Sola opined, has better fishing than Costa Rica.

Next door to the marina, another ancillary tourism industry --- boat repair and maintenance

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