This article is for the person who has read the other articles about the Bluewater Private and the corporate retreat and the partner summit and who needs to make the internal case for the investment to a decision-making process that will ask the cost question before it asks the outcome question. The cost question deserves a direct answer. Here it is, alongside the outcome question that the cost question should not be separated from.
The Cost Comparison
A Bluewater Private week on the Eighty2 for a group of six to eight people costs what it costs to run a 24-metre offshore sailing catamaran with a professional crew for seven days, plus the chef and the provisions and the diving programme and the Starlink connectivity. The specific number is available in the conversation that all Naora engagements begin with, and it reflects the actual cost of providing what is described rather than the inflated margin of a luxury product that is priced for impression rather than for value.
The comparison is with what the equivalent corporate retreat or partner summit costs in the conventional format. The four-star hotel venue rental for a two-day leadership offsite, the team facilitation fees, the travel and accommodation for the six to eight people attending, the dinner at the Michelin restaurant on the second evening: this total is typically in the range of fifteen to twenty-five thousand euros for a group of eight and produces the result that most people who have been on such offsites describe: a pleasant two days that reinforced the existing relationships without changing them and that the team members have largely forgotten three months later.
The Bluewater Private week costs more than this. The comparison is not between the cost of the week and the cost of the hotel offsite. It is between the outcome of the week and the outcome of the hotel offsite. And the outcome comparison is the only comparison that matters, because the investment is not in an event. It is in the relationships and the decisions and the understanding that the event produces, and those outputs are the only ones with a commercial value that justifies the investment.
The Outcome Comparison
The leadership team that spent a week on the Eighty2 and made the strategic decision that had been stuck in the boardroom for two years produced a commercial outcome that the hotel offsite that cost a third of the price did not produce in three attempts. The measurement of this outcome is not the cost of the week. It is the value of the decision that the week made possible, which in most cases where the stalled strategic decision is genuinely important is considerably larger than the cost of any gathering that could have produced it.
The investor who spent three days on the Eighty2 with the founder they had been evaluating for four months and committed to the investment at the end of day two made a decision that the structured due diligence process had not been able to produce in its entire duration. The cost of three days is not the relevant comparison. The cost of four months of process that had not produced the decision is.
The client relationship that was maintained at the Michelin restaurant level for three years and that became genuinely different after three days on the Eighty2 has a commercial value that the three years of Michelin restaurant maintenance did not produce. The relationship that is genuinely different produces commercial outcomes that the maintained relationship does not. The question is not what the three days cost. It is what the three years of the alternative produced, and whether the alternative’s production justifies its continuation.
The Case for the Decision-Maker
The internal case for a Bluewater Private investment is this: the conventional alternatives have been tried and their outcomes are known. The hotel offsite produces a pleasant event that does not change the dynamic. The client entertainment produces a maintained relationship that does not become a different one. The partner summit produces the communication of value rather than the production of it. The Bluewater Private is a different kind of investment in the same objective, and the objective is the relationship and the decision and the understanding that commercial outcomes require. If the conventional alternative were producing those outcomes adequately, the conversation would not be happening. The fact that it is happening is the evidence that it is not.
The cost of the Bluewater Private is available in the conversation. The outcome is available in the descriptions above and in the specific outcomes of the relationships and the decisions that offshore sailing has been producing in people for as long as people have been sailing offshore. The only question the decision-maker needs to answer is whether the specific outcome their organisation needs is among the ones that the offshore context produces. If it is, the cost is not the question. The conversation is.
