With the rising tide in popularity of fractional sharing programs, Beneteau has launched what it believes to be the best customer oriented fractional program available.

Wayne Burdick, President of Beneteau USA said, "We carefully took our time in entering Beneteau into the fractional business so that the fractional product we deliver would fully take advantage of the latest available technology and best suit the desires of the customer, offering superb flexibility and leading edge ease of ownership capability."

In September 2006, Beneteau engaged the expertise of Grant Headifen, the original founder of SailTime and the online scheduling concept for the fractional sailing industry. Headifen was challenged with delivering to Beneteau a fractional product that would combine the best aspects of online scheduling, yacht management and all the "tools and rules" that allow effective fractional ownership. What unfolded was Beneteau Fractional Yachting. It works like this; Four owners (or more or less if desired) collectively buy a Beneteau yacht from their local dealership. The dealer provides a Special Yacht Concierge Management Service™ that takes care of all the month to month regular maintenance and detailing as well as any other non-regular issues that might arise.

Headifen’s company, Nautic7, provides a Special Yacht Concierge Financial Management Service™ which includes paying for the slip, insurance, fuel, and maintenance items etc. Together, the concierge services provided by the Beneteau dealer and Nautic7 leave essentially nothing for the owners to do except sail their yacht.

Beneteau Fractional Yachting also uses Nautic7’s iBoat scheduling and Management™ software. iBoat allows the four owners to schedule the use of their yacht in 1/3rd day increments. An owner can combine the increments to schedule a full day, a weekend, a week or parts thereof. They can schedule up to a year in advance or for instant use. The iBoat software tool prevents any one owner from dominating the schedule more than their share but an owner can exceed their allocation by using any available time period within 24 hours. The iBoat scheduler is designed to make the owner feel as though, as much as possible, they have full use of their yacht.

Additionally, the iBoat software has integrated a cellular connected PDA that resides on each yacht. It electronically reports to the Beneteau dealer and the yacht owners the condition of the yacht.

In designing the program, Headifen says that he wanted to cover the biggest reasons that people baulk at buying a yacht which tend to be:

• the vessel sales price
• the ongoing monthly operating costs
• the time required to manage the yacht
• and the ultimate responsibilities of ownership.

He also said that while people have been sharing yachts for thousands of years, never before has there been such a comprehensive set of tools and rules to reduce or eliminate any issues around sharing. The Beneteau Fractional Yachting Program covers all these issues by: