Their aim is to offer boats in every Croatian marina, connecting interested clients directly with boat owners.
As reported by Jutarnji list on June 27, 2016, Internet boat renting platform Click and Boat is now available in Croatia, and currently, it has more than 300 boats registered in 40 cities.
This French startup was founded in 2016 on the share economy principle and in 2016 it started expanding to other Mediterranean countries. Along with Croatia, their services are, therefore, now available in Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey and Malta. Often called Uber for boats, this peer to peer yacht charter company works in the way that it offers all types of boats – from small by boats to large sailboats and catamarans, connecting private owners with interested clients.
It all started back in September 2013, with two contractors and a simple observation: on average, among the million boats in France, very few are used for more than 10 days a year. The two founders of Click & Boat, Edouard Gorioux, and Jérémy Bismuth both knew just how expensive having a boat can be with maintenance, insurance, and mooring bringing annual expenses to, on average, 10% of the price of the boat every single year.
During one of their many visits to French ports, Edouard and Jérémy came up with the idea of Click&Boat: a collaborative platform based on sharing and trust, to allow boat owners to earn money, confidently and safely.
In their first season, Click & Boat had more than 5 000 bookings, 500 boats on offer in 100 European ports, mostly in France, and in 2015 the number went up to 2500 registered boats. Due to increased interest, they decided to expand to 6 Mediterranean markets, including Croatia.
– Because of great interest for boats on the Adriatic, our goal is to create a large network of boats in Croatia, Croatian coast, as one of the most indented coasts in the world, offers many different locations, so our aim is to offer boats in every single marina in Croatia – says Marina Kopic, Click & Boat manager for Croatia.
The whole principle behind the platform is quite simple: owners create a free listing for their boat adding pictures, a description, a price, and some advice about the sailing area. Renters can then contact them directly with the Click & Boat messaging. Owners can access the sailing CV of the renter and can confidently choose the right sailors for their boats, pretty much like Airbnb.
Unlike other share economy services, Click & Boat is not experiencing regulation problems, as they have adjusted their business operations to comply with Croatian laws. Boat owners that want to join the platform must have a boat that is registered for charter, and it remains to be seen how existing charter companies will react to this new form of competition that just appeared on the Croatian market.
