Owners' profile: The Thai entrepreneur building a Southeast Asian charter empire

From a single catamaran in Phuket to a 20-strong fleet spanning Southeast Asia, owner Omi Tanchanok Vajarodaya has transformed luxury yachting in Thailand – armed with deep regional knowledge, hospitality instincts and an appetite for risk...

Eleven years ago, a young Thai entrepreneur named “Omi” Tanchanok Vajarodaya walked into the Bangkok Motor Show with her fingers crossed, hoping someone – anyone – from a car company would agree to meet her. 

The show was buzzing that year, all polished chrome and new-model shine, when someone at Lexus reluctantly gave her a slot. During the meeting, customers were being tempted with the usual perks that came with buying a luxury car: round-the-world tickets, premium insurance, bundles of the same old incentives. It felt dull and predictable.

“I was like, ‘It’s so boring. You guys have this every year,’” she recalls with a soft laugh. Vajarodaya is gently spoken, but what she did say was enough to catch their attention. She suggested offering something completely different: a yacht charter experience with her newly launched company. Lexus took the bait.

Of the roughly 500 Lexus models sold that year in Thailand, 200 buyers chose a charter aboard her Lagoon 421, a 13-metre catamaran. The collaboration helped her cover the down payment, but she still needed capital. Banks turned her down. A leasing company finally agreed, but only at punishing interest rates of 15 per cent or more and financing just half of what she needed.

Still, after the success of the partnership with Lexus, she scraped together enough to buy her second boat. And from there, everything accelerated.

That partnership changed everything. What started as a one-woman operation has, by 2025, grown into a fleet of 20 boats of all sizes and styles operating across Southeast Asia. Vajarodaya owns every one of them personally, chartering them through her company, Blue Voyage Charters, for everything from half-day excursions to long-range luxury transport between Thailand’s hotspots.

The flagship of the fleet is For Your Eyes Only, a 31.5-metre Astondoa based in Phuket and managed for longer charters by Ocean Independence. As one of only a handful of large motor yachts permanently based in the region, it is booked almost constantly.

Now in her thirties and with a flourishing business under her belt, you might expect Vajarodaya to relax – but when I meet her in Monaco, she doesn’t seem entirely satisfied. “There’s more to do,” she laughs. Her family’s traditional values meant they were deeply sceptical when, in her twenties, she poured her life savings into a yacht charter start-up.

“They were like, ‘Who do you think you are? Get a real job,’” she recalls. They are very proud now, she’s quick to tell me, but their scepticism made sense at the time. A decade ago, professional, high-quality luxury yachting in Thailand barely existed. Investing in it was a gamble.

Vajarodaya noticed the gap during her early-twenties adventures at sea with friends. They would rent small boats for birthdays or weekend escapes, but the experiences were inconsistent and often amateurish. “It was like going into someone else’s house,” she says. “Family pictures on the walls, shoes on the floor, and the master cabin locked.” With the experience that comes with travelling widely as a child and from her hospitality degree in Australia, she knew Thailand could do better.

“Less than one per cent of the [Thai] population knows about yachting,” she says, which seems astonishing given the region’s dramatic limestone cliffs, spectacular bays, and kaleidoscopic marine ecosystems. “It’s painful for me to see, because plenty of visitors have the money for yachting,” Vajarodaya says, but “the whole country has no professional companies.”

The dream became concrete at 24, when she purchased the first aforementioned 8-metre cruiser from the US for about $60,000. That was almost every penny she had at the time, and she was rolling the dice on a boat she hadn’t even seen in person. Everything around the project – website design, marketing, managing bookings, provisioning - she did herself.

She knew For Your Eyes Only, the crown jewel in her fleet, because a family friend owned the yacht. She bought it in 2020, recognising its potential for charter thanks to its generous volume, sporty styling, spa and gym spaces and vast capacity for water toys. “It has a very thorough maintenance programme,” she says.

“It’s my baby.” She uses it as often as she can, every month, usually for four or five days, with friends and family. A typical day might involve three hours of cruising before anchoring off a tiny island – she likes Ko Racha Noi in particular because of its remote position and inaccessibility. “You can only go when the weather is perfect,” she says. “You can’t go every day.”

But when you can, the experience is magical: clear water, soft sand, a lobster farm nearby, a fishing village where lunch is as simple and authentic as it gets – fresh fish, cooked minutes after being caught.

Raja Ampat is another top spot on her itinerary. “Some places are really worth calling the last paradise,” she says. “I’ve been diving around the world. Here you can swim for an hour and still have coral beneath you. Manta rays, tortoises, colours everywhere.”

She also adores Zakynthos in Greece, with its “50 shades of blue,” and Bora Bora for its quietness and the surreal experience of swimming with stingrays and sharks. When it comes to adrenaline and adventure, though, horseback riding in the Bahamas and flying a single-engine Cessna across New York’s skyline fit the bill beautifully.

She laughs when I ask whether she prefers travelling by air or sea. She uses helicopters constantly, especially in Switzerland, where resorts sit high in the Alps. Chenot Palace in Switzerland is among her top picks for a truly wellness-oriented stay. “IV drips, oxygen chambers, red-light therapy, VO2 Max… it’s very new, but I’m obsessed with longevity. Gut health, blood, brain. It’s my passion,” she explains.

Wellness may be high on her priority list, but clearly, Omi doesn’t spend much time standing still. Another part of her yachting enterprise involves facilitating the build and design of luxury speedboats and runabouts for high-end waterfront hotels. “I started the boatyard business three years ago,” she explains. Four Seasons Koh Samui and the Ritz-Carlton Reserve Phulay Bay are among her clients.

“Because we understand the hotel standard and the hotels trust us, it’s a happy arrangement,” she says. But as for the core chartering business, she says that her strong presence in Southeast Asia isn’t enough. 

She wants to branch into the Mediterranean now, which is why she was taking meetings at the Monaco Yacht Show 2025, trying to step into new territory. The competition might be tighter here, but with all the fortune and fortitude she has on her side, it doesn’t seem likely it will take long for Vajarodaya’s business to blossom in Europe.

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