Boat Hire - Update on tight availability
Why am I finding it so hard to book a hire boat
Booking a boat for recreational boat hire here at MyHarbour has become tricky and we wanted to explain where we are at with boat hires.
Recreational boat hire has been our core offering for more than ten years now.
We have introduced other service offerings over the years that have proven popular. These include NSW boat licence courses, boat handing refresher courses and private lessons. We also provide hire boats for commercial customers
Recently we added a boat club offering.
We have a fleet of boats that are shared between these different offerings.
During covid we had a huge uptake of our boat club product where you buy a 12 month boat usage program. We have also had major demand for our on-water boat handling refresher and boat licence courses which use the same hire boats. Commercial boat hire for companies needing boats for on-water 'work' continues too.
The boat club customers naturally get first dibs on boat bookings, then we schedule in boats for the various training programs and for commercial hires. By the time we release any remaining dates for recreational boat hire they get snapped up super quick.
It seems obvious that the problem can be solved by adding more boats but it isn't quite that simple.
The constraint is not always boats - just as often the constraint is team-members to tow, launch, retrieve, clean and maintain the vessels.
Hiring reliable staff that enjoy getting up at 4am to take boats to the ramp and then enjoy scrubbing dried fish guts off bait tables into the evening while their mates are at the pub is sometime tricky!
Its funny how many messages we get late in the evening claiming a sudden illness - we are pretty sure many of these messages are written in the front bar of the Steyne Hotel 🤣
So, adhoc recreational boat hire will continue to be tricky. We are bouncing some ideas around regarding boats and staffing,. and they may result in some relief. We are also considering the product mix to see if we do things a bit differently there.
We will certainly keep our customers posted with any changes through the website, social media and our periodical email updates,
Recreational boat hire has been our core offering for more than ten years now.
We have introduced other service offerings over the years that have proven popular. These include NSW boat licence courses, boat handing refresher courses and private lessons. We also provide hire boats for commercial customers
Recently we added a boat club offering.
We have a fleet of boats that are shared between these different offerings.
During covid we had a huge uptake of our boat club product where you buy a 12 month boat usage program. We have also had major demand for our on-water boat handling refresher and boat licence courses which use the same hire boats. Commercial boat hire for companies needing boats for on-water 'work' continues too.
The boat club customers naturally get first dibs on boat bookings, then we schedule in boats for the various training programs and for commercial hires. By the time we release any remaining dates for recreational boat hire they get snapped up super quick.
It seems obvious that the problem can be solved by adding more boats but it isn't quite that simple.
The constraint is not always boats - just as often the constraint is team-members to tow, launch, retrieve, clean and maintain the vessels.
Hiring reliable staff that enjoy getting up at 4am to take boats to the ramp and then enjoy scrubbing dried fish guts off bait tables into the evening while their mates are at the pub is sometime tricky!
Its funny how many messages we get late in the evening claiming a sudden illness - we are pretty sure many of these messages are written in the front bar of the Steyne Hotel 🤣
So, adhoc recreational boat hire will continue to be tricky. We are bouncing some ideas around regarding boats and staffing,. and they may result in some relief. We are also considering the product mix to see if we do things a bit differently there.
We will certainly keep our customers posted with any changes through the website, social media and our periodical email updates,
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