Local charter company rebounds in time to celebrate 10th anniversary
Though ravaged by the devastating effects of the September 2017 hurricanes and hit with a pandemic that stunted its recovery, MarineMax Vacations — a local boat-charter company — is now on the rebound; just in time to celebrate 10 years of operation in the Virgin Islands.
Buoyed by the resilience of its team, MarineMax’s Vice President of the Charter Division, Raul Bermudez, said the company is expecting an upturn in clients for the foreseeable future.
“Right now looks very strong. We have a combination of people who had to reschedule their vacation because of the pandemic and the restrictions were too tough. We have those, plus regular demands and we had the hurricanes three years ago. All those folks have been waiting to come back. So, right now until July, we are extremely busy,” the Vice-President said.
He told BVI News that, in the future, the charter company will look to keep pushing the boundaries and keep advancing the types of boats utilised in its operations.
Bermudez also said the charter company will be doing several things to celebrate its decennial jubilee.
“We just had the launch, which is the kick-off. This is the tenth anniversary of the first charter we delivered 10 years ago. We also have a contest online for customers to win a vacation. So, we will be doing some of that and we will be celebrating with all the charter guests coming down here,” Bermudez stated.
The Vice-President said the company has faced its fair share of challenges over the last decade, so credit must be given to staff members for keeping the company going.
“It has been challenging times with the hurricanes over four years ago, with the pandemic. We’ve been fortunate that we have Mr Clarence Malone (Director of Operations) for the last five years to recruit people and maintain them. MarineMax does stand by the people. So, we were able to keep people employed through all those challenges. However, the first challenge in setting up here was finding a suitable marina, making sure we followed all the proper protocols and ensuring the boats are registered properly,” Bermudez stated.
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No thanks. As someone who bareboated the BVI’s for several years pre-hurricane, and 1 time post hurricane I can tell you don’t bother.
MarineMax has major boat issues, and BVI has turned into a racist shthle. I couldn’t believe the change in attitude of the people of Tola and VG, rude, rude, and blatantly racist. (JVD and Cooper not included). I found a better cruising grounds for our group, and it’s not the racist BVI. See ya.
Your definition of ” better cruising grounds” differs from the rest of
the World fortunately.
Bye and best wishes . The Marine life in the waters of the VI certainly thanks you for your exit.
So easy to use the race card when you are of a different opinion. Move on.
I see you can’t handle the truth. I don’t blame you…..BVI has completely fallen by the wayside.
corruption and racism have been put on display.
And you want us to believe that you, a visiting tourist, takes the time to read our online news. You appear to be a disgruntled employee, work permit holder, more than the Tourist you purport to be. SMFH.
Marine Max is not a local company
Seems like the MM fleet shrunk during the pandemic. MM was using 4 or 5 docks at Nanny Cay’s outer marina in 2019 and in 2022 it’s down to only 3 docks.
Great to see power boats back in the charter mix. Congratulations to Marinemax for bringing this part of the industry back! Power cats are an amazing way to cruise for a weeks vacation.
The BVI needs more innovation like this. We all need to think out of the box instead of just copying existing business models if we want to stay fresh for tourists.
And on the racism front…we live in the West Indies. If you want to bitch about racism, move to Mississippi for a month and then get back to me. You have no idea how good we have it down here.