When we launched Sun Fun You, it wasn’t called SFY.
Many of you remember those clumsy MDFV days. It was originally called Mediterranean Delights Fitness Voyages. And, since that didn’t just roll off the tongue, we shortened it to MDFV, which somehow didn’t seem to help matters.
While in retrospect, that is a unnecessarily cumbersome name, we loved it, and thought we were super clever.
Mediterranean: doesn’t everyone want to vacay in the Med? That one seemed to work, and we kept it in our full name: Sun Fun You Mediterranean Voyages.
Delights: a tongue in cheek nod to Turkish Delights, to highlight the Turkish hospitality culture we embraced. Unfortunately, only those versed in Turkish culture got the reference. May people were left wondering if we were a swingers boat (we’re not!).
Fitness: we have a certified fitness instructor on each Voyage, which is a big differentiator versus the cheap booze-cruise style boats. We found out this was our biggest mistake. A whole host of people were terrified of joining a trip dedicated to fitness. And, on the flip side, people drawn to our Voyages for the fitness were disappointed that we aren’t militant about it. We don’t run a boot camp. And, while we offer healthy, local, fresh food: we offer a lot of it! And, lots of beer and wine. So, we were disappointing to those joining the Voyages to shed weight. (We do have people lose weight, but more often we have people tone up with all the fitness and hiking and swimming and belly laughs offsetting the food and drinks just perfectly.)
Voyages: that’s a critical piece we kept in our full name: Sun Fun You Mediterranean Voyages. We aren’t a cruise, and all that connotes. We don’t have air conditioned buses shuttling guests from site to site. We don’t have 24-hour buffets. We don’t require a rigorous check-in/check-out process for getting on and off the boat. We don’t up-charge at every possible moment. We’re a Voyage. Small. Intimate. Boutique.
It was one of our guests who suggested we rebrand away from MDFV, and we’re forever grateful.
After months of focus groups (drinks with friends) we came up with Sun Fun You Mediterranean Voyages, or Sun Fun You to our friends. What a different a name makes!