We live in the sharing economy. Aside from the famous Airbnb, sharing vehicles and much more has become an everyday reality especially for those of you who live in big cities such as London, New York, Paris and Rome. We are sure you are getting accustomed to use services like Barclays’ Bikes, (now Santader), Zipcar, Car2Go, Ubequoo, to ‘rent’ bicycles or cars.
In the UK even big players are venturing into peer-to-peer services like EasyCarClub (the logo will remind of EasyJet), BlaBlaCar and others that are based on the ownership or cars being on a private basis instead of being owned and managed by fleet operators like in the case of Zipcar.
In the boating industry things are a little more complicated but chartering or sharing a boat has been practiced for quite some time even if with much less technology involved in the process. After more than 50.000 people read our our article on Investing in Yachts to Charter we had to dig into a number of platforms that are slowly but steadily changing the game.
Today in the Yachting industry we have quite a few new web-based companies putting effort and resources into making the boating and yachting experienced more accessible to more people.
There are essentially:
- Yacht charter aggregators
- Peer-to-Peer boating and yachting platforms
- Traditional yacht charter firms
- Boating and yachting companies providing curated yachting experiences
- Hybrid platforms that work primarily with single yacht/boat owners and small fleets
- Yacht managers with big branded fleet
We have tried to create 6 macro categories, however not all companies do fall strictly in one of the above and some of them embrace traits of more than one of the above or have pivoted along the way from a business model to the other.
We refer broadly to the Airbnbs of yachting when considering mainly those platforms that are not too selective on the of new boat listings and welcome new boats right from the front end of their website (have a list your boat option) and focus primarily on entry prices as low as €100/day or even less.
We have asked some of the founders to help us and comment on this article main point.
BoatSetter.com Formerly Cruzin.com
Former Cruzin.com founded in 2012, a U.S. based peer-to-peer platform now merged becoming BoatSetter.com
It was started by Jaclyn Baumgarten and it is now based in Miami Florida.
We have asked Jaclyn to give us her comments on boat ownership vs easy access and she replied with a few meaningful lines:
BOATSETTER, often receives inquiries from perspective owners asking us what types of boats they should consider purchasing because they want to offset the cost of ownership through the Boatsetter program.
It’s a U.K. based counterpart of the aforementioned, focusing mainly on peer-to-peer and small fleet owners and it is called BorrowaBoat.com founded by Matt Ovenden.
BorrowABoat.com
We asked Matt to give us his comments on whether new platforms could actually bring innovation to the industry and his words were very clear to us.
” ..bringing the sharing economy to boating, with a wider choice of boats than in the current market, and wider choice of locations and better prices, will bring real change and benefits for the customer, and boat owner”
Another case of peer-to-peer that started in the U.K with a very different take from the previous ones but much more similar to Airbnb is BedsOnBoard.com
Started by Tim Ludlow a former Production director at Google. This platform initially cut away the issues surrounded by operating the vessels and focused on the lodging capability selling time on board just like as if they were apartments or hotel rooms. In our opinion a very interesting angle to focus on and surely a good way to monetise idle time even where and when the weather is not suitable for a non-experienced sailor.
We reached out to Tim and asked him to contribute with his experience:
At bedsonboard.com we’ve seen conversations between owners and guests about buying boats and we get phone calls from prospective buyers about how we can help them generate revenue. We’ve also seen owners buy bigger boats because of that income and our whole vision to keep owners as owners. We’re a top of funnel source, bringing in totally new potential customers that the boating industry as a whole has to convert and we talk regularly with British Marine and The Yacht Harbour Association about how we can help.
The key element to attract newcomers to boating is to give them a good idea of what type of experience they could have.
The success of TheYachtWeek.com founded by Erik Biörklund, Johan Kuylenstierna Corthesy and William Wenke for example, is largely based on their very emotional and targeted video communication and their sharp focus on a very specific target market. This company has indeed carved itself a niche and has delivered very well within that demographic segment often selling a first boating experience to many of their clients. It comes to no surprise and it was a very smart move to give video makers an incentive to join their sailing experiences.
A solid U.K. player that has focused on curated yachting and boating experiences is BoardABoat.com
Started by former Yahoo manager, Frank Sykes, BoardaBoat.com was originally very focused on peer-to-peer and added a new element to the equation. It was the first platform to the best of our knowledge that allowed users to sign up and get involved even without their own boat in the capacity of skippers/captains who had the trust of a boat owner or more than one in a specific area.
One more platform which was recently sold that grabbed our attention and was able to raise $2.6M in funding(*Source: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/incrediblue) is Incrediblue.com which was recently sold to Nautal (nautal.com)
Incrediblue had a Greek DNA and it was the brainchild of Antonios Fiorakis although once again the company incorporated in the U.K. which is a common denominator for tech-based companies that are willing to grow on this side of the Atlantic ocean. The strategy paid off for Antonios as the company was successfully acquired by Nautal.
Less focused on peer-to-peer but very much focused on making yachting accessible in terms of pricing and in terms of user experience are the next two players.
From Italian Entrepreneur Manlio Accardo we have Sailogy.com
Sailogy.com
Manlio surely knows a thing or two about luxury having covered the position of Head of corporate marketing at Ferrari and his platform and company very much focus on quality control, real time availability and user experience. We had a chat with him as well and we were very suprised to learn that their average booking value is higher then we expected it to be. Compared to more traditional yacht charter companies Sailogy.com focuses on efficiency as that is the only way to process a significant volume while keeping quality high.
Sailogy.com partnered with Quintessentially Lifestyle (the luxury concierge company) and Lastminute.com . Sailogy is based Milan, Italy.
They agree with us that it is vital for them and for their competitors to keep boats as active as possible and improve boat ownership in the process.
We could not list all of the platforms that are on the market right now and we probably will add more to the list however, there are two more we’d like to bring to our audience attention.
Another former Google manager, Anna Banicevic is the founder of Austrian-born Zizoo.com
ZIZOO.com
WeAreOnABoat.com is a start-up focusing on hybrid and eco-compatible vessels. This start-up originated in Amsterdam and one of its co-founders Tiago Varandas has given us a short to the point summary of what their mission is:
With the rise of the collaborative economy became easier then ever to get on a boat. Any boat… In some way is great to see our canals, rivers and oceans full of boats. But at the same time, the more motor boats we have on the water, more polluted it becomes. Luckily, there are alternatives to motor boats, but for some reason they are not having the attention they deserve. Therefore, we are on a mission to exclusively promote the rental of eco-friendly boats & yachts. Electric, wind or solar-powered.
Will they improve the yachting business and boat ownership ?
Will these platforms kill boat ownership ?
Lastly, those that want to own a boat or a yacht will continue to do so and they will actually benefit from a faster moving charter market even if more competition really means lower rates, but easier access to boats contributes to a growing demand for boating and yachting experiences.
