HAIKOU, August 26. /TASS/. The Sanya authorities have launched the process of creating an international yacht exchange center that will deal with cruise, amateur and sports boats, reported the Hainan Daily.
"This is one of the measures aimed at creating Hainan's free trade port," said a spokesman for the Sanya Central Business District Development Administration, where the new establishment will be located.
According to the official, the exchange yacht center stimulates the development of the entire industry, and it "will eliminate the obstacles standing in the way." The list of services that will be provided to consumers includes leasing, insurance, deposits, transferring the rights to operate the vessel, etc. "Thanks to this, it will be possible to concentrate and make all the necessary resources more accessible, to increase the scale of economic activity, during which they will be more efficiently used," the representative said.
According to official figures, there are 850 yacht berths in the port of Sanya, as well as about 100 companies that rent amateur boats. In 2019, their owners and tenants made about 100,000 sea voyages, organizing trips for more than 780,000 people.
As previously reported by the regional transport administration, Hainan's yachting industry has already recovered to last year's level from the coronavirus pandemic: from January to June, amateur boats, which transported about 347,000 passengers, left local ports about 52,000 times.
At the beginning of 2020, the government approved a project to create an artificial island in the area of Wenchang in the northeast of the Hainan province, with an area of 26 hectares. It will become a center for sea tourism and water sports. Owners of sports or amateur boats will be able to anchor there, and all those interested can rent a yacht.