4 March 2026

An integral part of the Macau Yacht Show, in recent years the Asia-Pacific Yacht Industry High-Level Forum has become a key platform for connecting China to the international boating community. Wang Yong, General Manager for the Nam Kwong Group, a mainland Chinese Enterprise which has over 70 years’ experience in operating extensive tourism and leisure platforms in Macau, said in his welcome speech, “the Forum is a great opportunity for the industry to come together to exchange ideas and work together to build a marine culture in the Greater Bay Area (GBA)” – the theme for this year’s presentations.

Australia is set to become one of the world’s premier superyacht destinations under plans for a new $200 million maintenance and refit hub unveiled by Rivergate Marina and Shipyard. The proposed expansion of the internationally acclaimed shipyard would be the catalyst for a major increase in superyacht visitation to Australia and the wider Pacific region due to its capability to service large luxury vessels over 50 metres.

The unprecedented drop in demand for air travel earlier this year triggered battles for survival for most airlines. One of the steps taken was to suspend refunding customers for unused and unusable tickets. This suspension was applied irrespective of fare-type so affected not only restricted but also fully flexible, refundable tickets including marine fare types. The practices of retroactively changing refund policies post-ticket purchase and the withholding of refunds are undoubtedly open to debate and scrutiny from an ethical business standpoint but these topics are not the subjects of this post.

Gold Coast City Marina & Shipyard (GCCM) will receive AUD$20 million from Deb Frecklington’s LNP Queensland Government for its Stage II development which will see the lifting capacity of the Gold Coast increase to 1200 tonnes and the current facility more than double in size.

APSA is pleased to announce that the APSA Guide is now online and can be found on the APSA website. See attached link where it can be viewed and downloaded from the APSA Website (Publications), https://www.apsuperyacht.org/publications.html