Putting a Yacht Into Charter in Bali or Phuket: What Actually Changes

How much can I earn chartering my yacht in Phuket or Bali?

We are not going to hand you a percentage, because the data does not support one and neither does an honest broker. Charter revenue depends on vessel size and category, how many weeks a year it is actually booked, guest rates that vary by season and boat condition, and management overhead, all of which vary far more than a single blended figure could responsibly capture.

What we can say with confidence is the framing that matters: charter income is real and it moves the ownership math, but it offsets the roughly 10 percent of purchase value that running costs represent each year, per model, per our cost of ownership guide. It does not zero that number out, and any charter manager who tells you otherwise before seeing your specific boat, route and booking calendar is guessing the same as we would be.

What is the Thai Charter License and who qualifies?

Introduced under a 2025 Ministry of Transport framework, Royal Decree B.E. 2568, the Thai Charter License lets a foreign-flagged yacht of 24 metres and above, lowered from an earlier 30 metre threshold, carry up to 12 paying passengers for a one year license period, without re-flagging Thai. Before this reform, a foreign-flagged yacht simply could not charter for hire in Thai waters at all. On tax, a qualifying yacht pays 7 percent VAT plus 5 percent corporate income tax on charter fee revenue earned in Thailand, rather than the standard 7 percent VAT on the full yacht value that applies to an ordinary private import. A yacht under 24 metres can still charter, but only by re-flagging Thai outright, since it falls outside the new license's size window. We go through the full duty and VAT stack behind this in our Thailand import guide.

What is a CAIT and do I need one to charter in Indonesia?

CAIT was the name of Indonesia's cruising permit for foreign yachts, now processed through the online YachtERS system run by the Directorate General of Customs and Excise rather than the older paper process the acronym still gets used for. It is a temporary entry permit, typically valid around three months at a time and renewable, entering through one of 21 designated ports of entry, and it is what almost every foreign-owned charter yacht around Bali, Komodo and Raja Ampat actually cruises under. Very few internationally-owned charter yachts formally flag Indonesian or import permanently: the cabotage principle under Law 17/2008 on Shipping generally reserves Indonesian flagging to Indonesian citizens and entities, which makes the temporary-permit route the practical default rather than a workaround.

Do I need a local company to charter my yacht in Indonesia?

In practice, yes. Foreign owners running a charter operation out of Bali typically layer in an offshore flag, Marshall Islands or Cayman Islands are the two we see most, alongside a local PMA company to hold the actual charter license. This is also where Indonesia's tax picture genuinely forks. A yacht imported permanently for private use can face the PPnBM luxury-goods sales tax at rates as high as 75 percent on top of standard import duty, a figure that has made permanent private import rare in practice. A government regulation has separately affirmed a PPnBM exemption specifically for cruise ships and yachts used in a tourism or charter business, so a vessel properly registered for commercial charter through that PMA structure faces a genuinely different tax outcome than the same boat imported privately. Standard Indonesian VAT, PPN, applies on top of duty for a permanent import either way, at 11 percent since 2022 with a further increase legislated for 2025. Verify the exact current rate and the PPnBM carve-out with an Indonesian customs broker before you structure anything, this divide needs a lawyer's sign-off, not a guide's summary.

Which is a better charter base, Phuket, Bali or Langkawi?

It depends entirely on what you already own and where your guests are flying from. Phuket has the deepest service infrastructure of the three, Phuket Boat Lagoon's Precision Shipwright Services alongside the newer Phuket Superyacht Shipyard, and the widest catchment of Andaman Sea cruising grounds. Bali offers Indonesia's most established charter-guest demand and the Komodo and Raja Ampat routes no other regional base can match, at the cost of a more layered legal structure to set up first. Langkawi runs a smaller crewed charter fleet, roughly 20 yachts by the counts we track, but pairs it with a genuinely duty-free registry, a different kind of advantage than either Thailand or Indonesia offers. We set out exactly how that registry works in our Langkawi duty-free guide, worth reading alongside this one if you have not settled on a base yet.

What running costs should I expect from a charter management company?

A charter manager's fee sits on top of, not instead of, the baseline running costs we walk through in our cost of ownership guide: berth, insurance, haul-out, crew if crewed, and maintenance, which we estimate model by model using a 10 percent of purchase value rule of thumb. A Lagoon 42, the most common charter catamaran across Phuket, Langkawi and Bali fleets, sits toward the lower end of that running-cost band precisely because a sailing catamaran burns less fuel than an equivalent-length motor yacht, one reason catamarans dominate the region's charter fleets in the first place. Ask any management company for its fee structure in writing against a specific boat and route before you build a return projection around it, and treat any number that ignores the underlying 10 percent baseline as incomplete.

Getting a real number for your boat

Tell us the model, which market you are leaning toward, and how far along your Indonesian corporate structuring already is if Bali is the plan, and we will walk the licensing and running-cost math through together before you commit the boat to a management contract. If you are still comparing yachts for sale in Indonesia against a Thailand-based purchase, that decision and the charter question above are worth making together, not one after the other.