Faruk Günlü (CMM) Teos Marina General Manager
As it is known, the transformation of Covid-19 into a pandemic has had a devastating effect on almost every sector and market. Although there are various speculative statements, no industry has yet seen the long-term consequences of the pandemic. However, we know that the pandemic has changed and transformed everything from social habits to consumer behaviors, from investments to our future planning, especially in business life in the short and medium term. While we were talking about full closure, travel barriers, new regulations and measures regarding the pandemic brought to food and beverage, transportation and accommodation facilities, we found ourselves in a world with different rules and called the “New Normal”. In a sense, every sector had to continue the game at a table where the cards were shuffled again.
During the pandemic, the marina industry, which is one of the arteries of marine tourism, has also gone through some changes. It is a fact that, with the transformation of Covid-19 into a pandemic, people began to worry more about financial, social, security and most importantly health than in the past, and to find the lifestyle they had in the past risky. Mobility restrictions, physical distancing and hygiene measures have made the consumer more selective in all their choices. In big cities, people started to do their grocery shopping via internet platforms, and they preferred to go to boutique hotels, hostels or rent a house during the holidays. Again, in this process, the demand for the “idea of owning a boat” increased tremendously.
Although there is no comprehensive research on this subject, I can say that as a person in the industry and based on my observations, a person who participates in sea tourism under normal conditions would spend about 30 times more than a consumer who participates in hotel tourism. With the pandemic, the number of people who sacrifice this expenditure and even more, and do it with great enthusiasm, has increased greatly. This has caused boat sales to increase like never before. With the pandemic, people who did not think of owning a boat before, bought boats and started to spend their free time and all their holidays on their boats. Where can a person and his family spend time away from the crowd, without the need for social distance rules, wearing a mask, in nature, as if at home? Of course he can have his own boat. What are the facilities that will offer them the peace, comfort and quality of their homes? Marinas. I mean, the pandemic has provided an unexpected advantage to the marina industry in this sense.
In addition to our yachtsmen who have just joined our family, it has become plausible for our boat owners who have preferred Teos Marina quality for many years to move both their homes and offices to our marina and benefit from the professional and quality service offered at Teos Marina 24/7, during and after the pandemic period.
The profile of yachtsmen in Teos Marina mostly consists of business people with active business life and their families. For this reason, thanks to our free internet service, which works smoothly everywhere in our marina during the pandemic period and provides 300 Mb speed access to all our guests from their boats, the boat owners were able to turn their boats into offices and follow their work, as well as maintain their comfort at home by not being deprived of the series on Netflix. One of the important issues that the pandemic accelerated was of course digitalization. We continue to run some of our services through digital channels both during and after the pandemic process in our marina. However, as in all service sectors, the more face-to-face and heart-to-heart we are with our yachtsmen, the luckier we feel. But habits do not change easily. As you know, as I said before, we continue to provide services to our yachters in our marina with a set of habits and unwritten rules that we call the “New Normal”. For example, after the pandemic at Teos Marina, our boat owners can order baked goods such as pizza, coffee, food and croissants from the restaurants, cafes and bakery in Teos Marina Çarşı, which has been completely renovated recently, and have their boats serviced without the need to interfere with the crowd. With the “Migros Virtual Market” application offered by Teos Marina Migros to all the people of Sığacık, they have started to order the products they want to their boats. In order to increase the comfort of our boat owners in the marina, we doubled the number of our golf vehicles this year. By using clean energy in our fully electric golf vehicles, we thought not only about the comfort of our yachtsmen, but also of nature. We added 20 more this year to the 15 bikes we launched last year, and increased it to 35 bikes. Now, whatever our boat owners want to reach in Sığacık is only a few pedals away.
In Teos Marina, which has become the apple of the eye of all of Turkey, especially in recent years, with its bays of every shade of blue, clean air, deep-rooted history, organic flavors and the fun life it promises, both our boat owners and other visitors are welcome to visit the recently renovated and In Teos Marina Bazaar, which has a brand new look, walking in the fragrant gardens, spending time in quality food and beverage outlets, shopping in boutiques, sweating in our outdoor sports areas and resting in the Spa Center, they are quickly purified from the suffocating and tiring effects of the pandemic.
Although we say that the demand for our marina has increased during the pandemic process, Teos Marina has already been serving with 100% occupancy since 2018. With our ability to take quick action and produce innovative solutions for the needs of our yachtsmen, we care about the comfort, safety and health of our yachtsmen, and we continue to maximize the pleasure our yachtsmen will get from their marina life by providing quality and comfortable professional marina services with our competent staff. Our boat owners can rest assured that we will make every effort to maintain 100% quality and satisfaction even after the pandemic.
