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25.08.2023 - 13:59 / skift.com / Travel Experiences / Selene Brophy
From a catamaran in California or a kayak in Croatia, water-based recreational experiences are in high demand, according to boat booking trends.
For one boat rental company, GetMyBoat with over 150 000 water experiences in 184 countries, bookings have increased nine-fold when comparing January 2019 to this January. As a result, boat owners, captains, and tour operators are seeing growth as their boats are rented more frequently, increasing their earnings, which range from $25,000 annually to over $100,000 a month.
The continued craving for unique and memorable experiences has seen boating and getting out on the water become a cool culture rooted in specific destinations. Miami is one such example.
Marcel Perdomo, the owner of Mboat Rental based in Miami, Florida said he had gone from a recreational boat owner to a fully fledge boat rental business. He started in 2017 with one recreational boat that he would list for weekend tours, on what he describes as this Airbnb or Uber for boats. He now owns three boats and has booked over 3 200 tours with GetMyBoat, earning a Super Host title as the operator with the most bookings on the platform.
“We’ve been able to make this boating culture cool. If you go to Los Angeles, you’ll probably go see the movie studios, that kind of stuff. If you go to New York, you go to Broadway.
“If you come to Miami, you have to go boating!”
In 2022, just over 2,500 available boats, houseboats, or yachts were in the U.S., reaching an occupancy of 51.5 percent and over $54 million in revenue — AirDNA data further outlines the most popular locations are Key West, Florida, Miami and U.S. Virgin Islands.
The boat listings market is more than triple the size in Europe with 8 800 offerings, with a lucrative value of over $200 million, according to AirDNA, with occupancy reaching 49 percent in 2022.
GetMyBoat spokesperson Val Streif told Skift its January bookings are tracking a “booming year in travel spending and is projected to increase as we get closer to the summer holidays and the peak season of 2023.”
“Our takeaway is that despite recession indicators, it’s clear that consumers still want to have memorable experiences with their friends and families while traveling.”
Unsurprisingly, demand for water-based experiences ebbs and flows, with the peak summer periods seeing the highest bookings. AirDNA data shows demand in summer 2021 broke pre-pandemic records. It continued into 2022, increasing by a nominal 1 percent for quarter three compared to quarter three in 2018.
While overnight boating options are available on GetMyBoat, they are not as popular as the two-hour or half-day boating experiences, said Streif, who added that before applications like GetMyBoat, the boat charter
A guy jumped into Elvis Presley's swimming pool while touring the late singer's Graceland home — and people online disagree on how the King of Rock 'n Roll would have felt about it.
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