Brunswick Marine gets into rentals

In what may be a portent to the future, Brunswick Corporation, the world’s biggest boat builder and marine entity, announced the launch of a strategic partnership in the USA in late March with a leader in the peer-to-peer boat rental market space.

Brunswick says the peer-to-peer model creates a new way to easily connect potential renters with owners willing to rent their assets, and is quickly gaining traction in the [American] boating space.

The new partnership between Brunswick and San Francisco-based Boatbound is based on the common belief that the peer-to-peer boat rental model encourages boating participation and trial, while at the same time allowing boat owners to offset some of their ownership costs. At least in America.

This partnership with Boatbound offers Brunswick a way to more closely monitor and observe developing trends in the consumer boating market. It also provides Brunswick's dealers potential income from renting boat inventory.

"The long-term health of our industry requires us to make boating even more accessible and affordable, especially among younger, aspiring boaters," said Brunswick Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dusty McCoy.

"Boatbound offers an innovative way to provide those interested in boating with actual boating experiences, which we believe will translate to boat ownership down the road.

“Additionally, Boatbound's business model provides rental income opportunities to current boat owners who also gain access to boat rentals when away from home."

Boatbound founder and CEO Aaron Hall said the online peer-to-peer market concept is already making successful inroads into the travel, hotel and auto-rental industries [in the USA]. Both Brunswick and Boatbound see the boating industry as a natural next step and look forward to realising this vision.

Owners have full control over who rents their boat, as well as the rental price, availability and conditions of their listing. Renters will be able to choose from a wide selection of boat types and price ranges in an increasing number of boating markets across the United States.

After each rental, both the boat owner and renter review each other to provide feedback that can be viewed on their Boatbound profiles by future owners and renters. Initial efforts will be focused on the Miami and San Francisco markets, with expansion planned throughout 2014.

BoatPoint and boatsales put the prospect of peer-to-peer boat ‘rental’ to the authorities, namely NSW Maritime who forwarded our query to the Australian National Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA).

AMSA’s office of legal counsel have confirmed to us that peer-to-peer boat rental constitutes a commercial activity that would render the vessels as domestic commercial vessels under the National Law and that they would fall into Class 4 - Bare Boat Charter.

Currently, under the National Law and the National Standard for Administration of Marine Safety, Class 4 vessels less than 7.5m in length do not require survey if they are not hired (or rented) for overnight hire.

However, a Certificate of Operation would be required along with compliance with the General Safety Standard under the NSCV and implementation of a Safety Management System would be required.

That said, there’s little question that the peer-to-peer rental model would open up a new boating markets if authorities could see a way around legal hurdles. Boatsurfers.com is a different local model about to launch, with a forum for casual crewing at numerous locales around the world.