Meet our associates: Sea Teach S.L.

SEA TEACH. Silja Teege, the owner and director of this experienced company tells us about the difficulties the charter companies are going through in these moments. She also makes a global review of the trajectory of this company in Cala d'Or.

Could you talk me about the trajectory of the company?

We started being Sea Teach in the year 2000, the moment when we realized that in Cala d'Or there was not any charter company. The taste from yacht comes from my husband who has been with boats all his life and he was qualified before coming to Mallorca.

How have you fared the tourist season that has ended?

It has not been as good as it used to be. Less boats are sold and we notice it in the school because as there are less people that buy boats, less people want to learn boating. And related to the charter side we can tell that our British market has decreased. The German market has been very good and the Swiss market has been fantastic.

How does your company approach the next years?

We have a saying at the moment that is “more work, less money.” We have to work hard and be innovative. We are diversifying, we are running some European projects as well. This keeps us busy in the winter and it gives us a bit more money, obviously. In this charter company (and school) you have to work hard and try to get the customers in.

What services and products do you offer?

Our main business is charter and sea school. This school is mainly for British tourists. We are associated to the UK system (RYA). And our second part of the business is charter. We do daily and weekly charter, skipper day charter. For boats we only do motorboats, we don't do any sailing. Apart from that we do a bit of chandlery, mainly into safety equipment but leaving aside the most common ones. We also deal with the paper work for charter licenses, registration and so on.

What are the main problems of the yacht sector in the Balearics?

The problem of the matriculation tax is the main one. One reason why our business is suffering is that we have not had new charter boats on our fleet for a long time because people cannot pay the matriculation tax and they are not interested in putting the boats for charter. So we have less boats which we can charter and less customers who want to chart over that, because our boats are getting old. The charter business is suffering quite a lot from the matriculation tax.

Why did you decide to join the AENB?

We did join to the AENB two years ago through the initiative of Patricia Bullock for the issue related to the matriculation tax. She has a company called Network Group. In that time there were a lot of companies having problems with the matriculation tax. She organized all the English-speaking charter companies to form a special group and come a member of the association so that we would have also a body behind us.

What do you value most about being a member of the AENB?

The political influence. If we need any help we can get it there. We have been in contact with Marga over a few issues as well and she was helping a lot. We, as charter company, always have problems dealing with illegal charter boats and she was very supportive on that side as well and face this problem.