Yesterday I was speaking with the director of a state marine industry association who said something very profound.  He said that many have the wrong thought process because they are alarmed dealers are hurting and going out of business.  If they go out of business, they wrongly believe there will be less boaters. 

He went on to say that service is what keeps people in boating, not having access to buying boats.  Most boats are used anyway and what makes people leave boating is waiting too long for the boatyard to fix the boat or not knowing what is going on with their boat.  He went on to say that many boatyards don’t comprehend they are in the service business and need to keep customers in the loop when jobs are underway and they need to hit deadlines.  In the northern regions if it takes two weeks to get a boat fixed, that is 2 or 3 weekends out of 16 that they have to use the boat.  On average, a 40 foot boat costs about $5,000 to $10,000 a year just to maintain, get dockage, winterize, launch, insurance, etc.   Losing two weeks can be a reason to just get out of boating and start camping, golfing, or get into some other past time or hobby. 

So a lot rests on the boatyard’s ability to turn jobs quickly and effectively or the boating industry will suffer from people getting out of boating.  That is the real issue, not selling more new boats.

Tags: Add new tag, Boater feedback programs, Boater Loyalty, Boatyard benchmarking, Customer Intimacy, Customer Loyalty, Marina Benchmarking, Marine

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 9:13 am and is filed under Press Release. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.