[DRAFT PREVIEW] Yacht Benchmark — Methodology

This page records how the Luxury Yacht Digital Benchmark was constructed, tested and scored, so that every published figure can be traced, checked and reproduced.

Version 1.0 · Campaign 01 · 2026

The Sample

The Luxury Yacht Digital Benchmark evaluated 22 luxury yacht charter, brokerage, marketplace, and experiential-travel companies selected by Luxury Brand Marketing using defined inclusion criteria. Twenty-one websites were successfully scored under standardized mobile Lighthouse conditions; one remained in the research universe but was excluded from score averages and rankings because the document could not be retrieved after repeated tests.

Selection and Scope

• The universe comprises independent charter houses, brokerages, technology-enabled marketplaces, and experiential luxury-travel operators.
• Large multinational brokerage groups and mass-fleet operators were excluded by design to preserve a more comparable field of independent and boutique-oriented businesses. The exclusion list and rationale are retained and available on request.
• Three yacht manufacturers were scanned only as a calibration reference band. They are excluded from all rankings and cohort averages.

Test Conditions

• Homepage only. Each company's primary homepage was tested; this is not a full-site audit.
• Mobile strategy, applied identically to every company.
• Scan window: 15 July 2026, 19:49–19:58 UTC.
• Lighthouse 13.4.0, via the PageSpeed Insights API (v5).
• Categories requested explicitly: Performance, SEO, Best Practices, and Accessibility.

The Scoring Model

Lighthouse supplies the underlying category scores. The mapping to the four Luxury Standard™ disciplines, the Conversion calculation, and the grade bands are Luxury Brand Marketing's proprietary interpretation.

Grade bands: Legacy 90–100 · Distinguished 80–89 · Established 68–79 · Presentable 55–67 · Pretense 0–54.

Accessibility

Accessibility is recorded as a standalone technical category and contributes to Conversion at a 20% weight. Because Conversion represents 20% of the Overall calculation, Accessibility's direct effective contribution to the Overall score is 4%. It is not presented as a fifth Luxury Standard™ discipline.

Cohorts

Companies are compared within business-model cohorts rather than as a single undifferentiated list:

• Charter House / Brokerage — 16 selected; 15 scored. The core commercial market and primary comparison set.
• Experiential Luxury Travel — 4 scored. Operators selling the voyage and the experience.
• Marketplace / Tech-enabled — 1 scored. Technology-led charter platforms.
• Luxury Travel Club — 1 scored. Membership models with on-water collections.

Cohorts containing a single company are used for business-model classification only; no comparative cohort conclusion is drawn from a one-company group.

Field Results

Among the 21 successfully scored websites, the average Overall score was 71.1. Thirteen websites — 62% of the scored field — fell within the Established band.

Limitations

• Scores are a point-in-time technical assessment. Lighthouse Performance is computed from weighted lab metrics under simulated conditions and can vary between runs.
• Homepage-only testing does not evaluate interior pages, booking flows, or logged-in experiences.
• Revenue and scale indicators are directional qualification proxies drawn from public footprint — not verified financials — and are not used in scoring.
• The benchmark measures digital execution. It does not assess vessels, service quality, or commercial performance.

Unavailable Result

One website could not be scored because Lighthouse was unable to retrieve the document under repeated, identical test conditions. The company remains within the stated research universe but is excluded from calculated score averages and rankings pending manual review. Lighthouse returned FAILED_DOCUMENT_REQUEST for both the www and bare-domain versions under identical mobile conditions.

Outlier Verification

The highest-scoring result was rerun under identical mobile conditions and reproduced exactly; the repeated result was retained.

Instrument Verification

The scoring instrument was cross-checked against a live run of the public Luxury Website Grader on 15 July 2026. The live tool returned category and calculated scores identical to the benchmark's recorded values for the same company under the same mobile conditions.

Reproducibility

Every record retains the scan date and time, the tested URL, the device strategy, the Lighthouse version, the four raw category scores, the calculated Conversion and Overall scores, the final grade, and any retry or failure note.

Citation

Suggested citation: The Luxury Yacht Digital Benchmark, Campaign 01 (2026), Luxury Brand Marketing — agencyofluxury.com.

Media enquiries: press@agencyofluxury.com · (909) 333-6081