During their combined half-century of booking superyacht charters worldwide, Neil Hornsby and Amanda Armstrong felt like the magic was fading. Clients who should have been filled with excitement and anticipation were instead scrolling through what seemed like endlessly growing lists of yachts online. All the questions became about specs, travel dates and budgets.
“We’re booking a superyacht here,” Armstrong says. “It’s meant to be fun.”
Even worse, Hornsby says, is that when friends of charter clients asked about the experience of booking a superyacht, the answer was a frustrating meh.
“They hear it’s great when you get on the boat,” Hornsby says, “but, by God, getting there was hard.”
So, Armstrong and Hornsby set out to form a charter agency that’s more like a Savile Row suit-maker and less like a department store. They have just launched Yomira, with their home base in London. They intend to work personally with every client, using their decades’ worth of experience to explain not only the possibilities that chartering offers but also the possibilities specifically tailored to the client’s tastes—the kind of information clients can only get when working one-on-one with a longtime expert.
“From the new-client perspective, it can be quite intimidating and overwhelming. There are a lot of yachts,” Armstrong says. “We’re putting the inspiration and the excitement front and center.”
The name Yomira comes from ancient Sanskrit. Yo means “your” and mira means “ocean,” a combination that Hornsby says matches the company’s goal: to make the whole charter experience, including booking, the kind of once-in-a-lifetime fun that it should be for everyone in the charter party.
As he puts it, “We want everyone to feel excited throughout the process.”
A Half-Century of Experience
Amanda Armstrong and Neil Hornsby started Yomira after more than 50 years’ worth of collective experience in the industry, with extensive experience booking superyacht charters.
Their goal is to work personally with every client who wants to book superyacht charters at the top of the market. “We don’t give a chatbot for you to put in your information,” Hornsby says. “We want to find out what you love.”
Take the next step: yomira.com
