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Roughly 40% of charter yacht listings above 50m display "rate on request" or "POA" instead of a published weekly rate as of May 2026. The proportion rises with size. For 80m+ yachts the share is closer to 70%. The convention is so common that most charter clients have stopped questioning it. They should question it. The rate-on-request label hides four very different things, and only one of them is good news for the client.
We tracked 320 charter listings across the major broker platforms in May 2026 to look at when the rate is shown and when it is not. The pattern is consistent. Knowing what category the silence belongs to will save a charter client hours of pointless inquiry.
The four reasons for hiding the rate
Reason one: owner privacy and competitive positioning. The most common driver. Owners of 70m+ yachts often request that the central agent suppress the rate card on public listings. The reasoning is partly privacy (a published rate is a financial datapoint the owner does not want associated with the yacht's name) and partly competitive (the owner does not want to anchor the market against the yacht). This is a legitimate convention and it tells you nothing bad about the yacht. Brokers will provide the rate quickly on written request, often within the same day.
Reason two: weekly rate variability that breaks the single-number convention. Some yachts have radically different rates by week. A 65m yacht might charter at $600K in shoulder Greece, $900K in peak Med, and $1.1M in peak Caribbean. The broker would rather quote per week than commit to a single headline number that is going to be argued either up or down depending on the inquiry. Hiding the rate is a coordination decision, not a hiding decision.
Reason three: contact-generation gate. The broker uses the absence of a rate as a way to force the client to inquire, which captures the lead. This is the version of rate-hiding that we have the least patience for. It treats the inquiry as a marketing event, which it should not be on a $500K+ purchase. Some platforms (we will name them in the version of this piece behind the broker review section, but we will keep the broad pattern public) lean on this practice. Some do not. You can tell the difference by whether the broker, when asked, gives you a written rate quote quickly or routes you into a phone call with no number.
Reason four: inconsistent pricing across brokers. A yacht represented by multiple retail brokers (not a single central agent) sometimes has different rates quoted by different brokers. Hiding the rate on public listings reduces the risk of competing brokers showing different numbers for the same week. This is the version of rate-hiding that should make a charter client most cautious. If the rate varies by who you call, the broker's incentive structure is doing something the charter client should understand before committing.
How to read a hidden rate
The fastest test is to send a written inquiry asking for a rate quote on a specific week, embarkation port, and guest count. A reputable broker responds inside 48 hours with a written number. The quote should cover: weekly rate (in the operator's currency), APA percentage, VAT or charter-tax exposure by jurisdiction, gratuity expectation, and any obvious extras (helicopter, dive instructor, specific water toys outside the standard fleet). The quote does not need to be the final number, but it needs to be a number on paper.
If the broker pushes back with "let's get on a call first" or "we can discuss when we know more about your trip," that is the contact-generation gate at work. We have seen this from broker firms that should know better. The right answer is to politely insist on a written number. If the broker cannot or will not produce one, you have learned something about how that broker operates that is worth knowing before you commit anything.
What the hidden rate tends to be vs the published rate
When we compare hidden rates we have negotiated against to the equivalent published rates in the same size class, the hidden rate is usually 5% to 15% higher than the size-class published median. Not always. Some hidden rates are below published peer rates, particularly when an owner has set a low rate for personal reasons (a friend's charter discount, a charter management contract that includes a guaranteed-rate floor, a yacht being positioned for sale where the owner is happy to subsidise charter to keep utilisation high). The hidden rate is not a uniform premium. It is uniform information asymmetry.
The premium when it exists is partly the cost of the privacy convention and partly the cost of the lower price competition. The yacht that is publicly listed at $750K can be compared by the client to ten similar yachts at known rates. The yacht that is "POA" can only be compared after the inquiry. Some charter clients will pay a margin for less comparison, intentionally or not.
When rate-on-request is genuinely the right convention
There are three situations where hiding the rate is not just acceptable but correct. The first is for ultra-large yachts (100m+) where the comparable set is so small that the rate is functionally negotiated every season. The published rate would be either misleading or instantly stale. The second is for yachts mid-refit, where the charter rate post-refit is being established and any published number would be wrong. The third is for yachts that take only a small number of charters per year and screen clients carefully before quoting. A 90m owner-favourite yacht doing two charters per year is reasonably entitled to know who is asking before naming a price.
When rate-on-request is a problem
For most 40m to 70m charter yachts, the case for hiding the rate is weaker than the case for publishing it. The yachts are in the broad market, the comparable set is large enough to support a published number, and the client benefit of price comparison is real. We push the brokers we work with closely to publish rates on this part of the fleet, and most of them do. The ones who do not are usually leaning on the contact-generation gate, and we generally route clients to the brokers who publish.
What needs work
We would push for a standardised rate-disclosure norm at the 40m to 70m size. Published low-shoulder, mid-shoulder, peak rates with a small footnote that prices are subject to specific-week confirmation. The MYBA charter contract standard already covers the variability with the rate negotiation pre-contract. Publishing rate bands does not lock the broker into a single number; it just lets the client comparison-shop on a like-for-like basis.
We would also push for a clearer disclosure when the same yacht is listed by multiple brokers with different headline rates. The current practice of running parallel listings with parallel rates produces unnecessary client confusion, and the explanation (each retail broker can adjust the rate within a range set by the central agent) is not communicated to the client. A simple "this yacht is also listed at $X via [other broker]" footnote would do.
Passed on
We pass on quoting clients into the contact-generation rate-hidden listings unless the client has specifically asked for the yacht by name. The inquiry overhead is too high for the information returned. There are better-priced equivalent yachts in nearly every case at the 40m to 70m size, and the rate-hidden listing rarely beats the publishable comparable.
We also pass on broker firms whose default practice is to hide rates as a marketing gate. We will not name them in this public version of the piece, but the rate transparency record is one of the inputs to our broker rankings and it shows up there.
FAQ
Why do some yacht charter listings hide the price? Four reasons: owner privacy, rate variability by week, broker contact-generation, or inconsistent pricing across brokers. Only the last is a problem for the client.
Should I trust a yacht charter listing with no published rate? Yes, with caution. A hidden rate is not a fraud signal. Many top-end yachts do not publish. Always ask the broker for a written rate quote on the specific week before any further commitment.
How do I get an actual yacht charter price? Send a written inquiry through the broker with the specific yacht name, the specific week, the embarkation port, and the guest count. A reputable broker will respond with a written quote inside 48 hours.
Is a hidden rate usually higher or lower than a published rate? Usually higher by 5% to 15% in the size-class comparison, but not always. Some hidden rates are below market for non-commercial reasons.
What if the broker refuses to put a rate in writing? Ask once more. If still refused, work with a different broker. A charter is a six-figure-plus commitment and the rate should be written, dated, and broken out by line item before any deposit moves.