GetMyBoat: Bookings To Double This Summer Amid Reopening

A rising tide of post-pandemic business has lifted GetMyBoat, which bills itself as the world’s largest “boat rental and water experience” marketplace. The company announced on Wednesday (May 12) that it has logged a record 700 percent year-over-year organic growth between January and the end of April of this year, with rates accelerating each month with the easing of pandemic restrictions.

GetMyBoat said it had an annual run rate that exceeded $158 million, putting the Bay Area company on track to have more than one million boating customers by the end of the year. A “dramatic” surge in demand for water experiences has led to customers renting boats every few minutes on the platform. The company has taken on thousands of new boat operators and is working with them to find customers and expand their fleets, expecting to see its business double in the summer.

“2021 is off to an incredible start with tremendous, pent-up demand. There has always been a significant desire for boating experiences, but last year really amplified the need for customers to get out on the water quickly, easily and safely,” said Bryan Petro, chief operating officer (COO) for GetMyBoat.

Petro discussed this spike in boating interest in an interview with PYMNTS last year. At the time, the company was coming off a busy summer that saw a 3,900 percent increase in demand, even during the COVID pandemic. As Petro put it, travelers were staying close to home, “going wherever they can travel by car, and they definitely don’t want to go indoors anywhere.” Boating, he said, provides a safe, well-ventilated activity that leaves people fairly isolated, with just the people in their social bubble.

“Because of COVID, it feels like people are discovering [boating] for the first time,” Petro said. “[But] we’ve been around since 2013 … and we’ve been growing year over year. But then to hit this sort of scale — this exponential growth this year [where] we’re seeing that a lot of new boaters are hitting the water — that’s great.”