They make you want, moored and motionless alongside their pontoons, these sailboats and motor boats. A feeling at the origin of the creation of
Click & Boat by Jérémy Bismuth, originally from Marseille. “I often fished at Pointe Rouge with my grandfather and, in my imagination, there were plenty of big fish off the coast but we didn’t have a boat when dozens were unused in front of us”, recalls- he. Twenty years later, in 2013, this stubborn feeling led him to create what is today the No. 1 in Europe for boat rentals.
85% of the 32,000 boats in the fleet, spread over 50 countries and three quarters of which are privately owned, are leased. Among them, 8,000 are in France and a little more than 3,000 in Paca where 40% of their market value is realized.
Marseille, first destination followed by Hyères and Corsica
Marseille is the most popular destination, followed by Hyères and Corsica. “It’s simple, for the period August 1 to August 15, we no longer have a four-cabin catamaran available throughout the Mediterranean,” summarizes Jérémy Bismuth. The company is targeting 100 million activity values in 2021 and the number of sailings already carried out since the start of the year in the region is already higher than 2019, the last “normal” year. Its growth is dazzling: after having bought Océan Evasion in 2019, the digital platform swallowed the European No. 2 Nautal last year and the German Scansail in 2020.
A sector in full expansion which motivated Pierre Olivier Bidault to launch Wiziboat in 2017. “I was a boat dealer and importer for 20 years. I saw the difficulty of customers who put more and more money in their boat and its maintenance without using it enough ”. So he created this service which works by subscription and alongside his company on the stock market on July 7th. “We have 21 bases in the Mediterranean where 60% of the reservations of our 500 subscribers are made,” he continues.
More boaters than boats
What to overshadow the giant Click & Boat? Not really, if the two leaders are to be believed. “If you want Click & Boat is more of an Airbnb type service when we are more on a Vélib ‘type operation”, summarizes Pierre Olivier Didault. The two services can even complement each other, wants to believe Jérémy Bismuth. The rental offer making it possible to continue to lower the subscription ticket.
Because the main obstacle in this market seems to be more the lack of available boats than the lack of boaters. There are however a little more than a million boats in France, according to numbers of Maritime Affairs, of which 10% are
less than 10 days per year.