Is DOCKWA taking over your Marina Management and online presence?
- Thread starter jssailem
- Start date
It looks like they charge 15% on transient reservations. I can’t find anything about their fees for yearly contracts. Also, marinas probably aren’t in a position to give away money for nothing, so presumably the fees they pay Dockwa replace some existing costs that they were paying other software companies or managers.
Same, plus our marina (privately owned, and not using Dockwa) asks to be named as “Additional Insured” on our policy.
So much easier to find a marina on the Dockwa app, click to book it, get an email confirmation, and have payment and paperwork automatically handled.
I’ll throw in that at one Marina on the ICW I needed to show I had car insurance to use their loaner car. Of course I didn’t have the document although I make a practice of keeping such docs on my phone. So DOCKWA maybe could have helped me there. I walked.
I wonder if we have entered (drifted?) into a new era of boating where the majority of boaters will expect a nice place to tie up, and a curated short-cruise-away dock with luxury amenities to match? And presumably, have the budget for this, This will slowly leave behind active sailors and owners of "performance cruisers" under about 45 feet length.
New boats in all the ads seem to be racing oriented hulls or 50' long very wide party boats. They sail adequately on a 12 knot day, tho, So there's that!
From reading my sailing mags from the UK, they are also seeing large companies buy up marinas and offer boaters (full page full-bleed color) ads -- showing luxury docks to journey to within a few hours of each marina -- all covered by one $$$ monthly fee. So convenient.
What with condo's replacing so many older marina's, there will be fewer and fewer (albeit expensive and fancy) places to park a boat. I kinda wonder where this will end.
Meanwhile, we are kinda like little sailing frogs posting little croaking noises back n forth on the 'net about how our water temperature seems to be .... rising...! ? Oh My.
- Oct 22, 2014
- 24,901
My understanding is Dockwa is a tiered service, a marina contracts for different levels of support. Their website lists the various services they have. At least on the East Coast the value is in the advertising and one-stop shopping. Going to Annapolis, search for marinas in Annapolis and get a list where you can find the locations, services, and cost for each marina. Pick one you like and submit a reservation request. Two years ago I was looking for a slip during the boat show in Annapolis. I used Dockwa to waitlist at multiple marinas and accepted and then cancelled a series of reservations until I ended up in a marina in Eastport within walking distance of the show. Managing that by phone would have been a pain for both me and the many marinas I had contacted. The software took care of all the reservations and cancellations.
The RV world is experiencing the same consolidation of operators as the marina world is. My marina which is embedded in an RV Park is owned by a Canadian private equity company and managed by a company specializing in running RV parks.
Sorry but you are mistaken. A local restaurateur has purchased about 6 marinas in the charleston area in the last few years and manages one or two others. Granted they are not the big three in the harbor. The ones he ownes are: Sea Breeze, dolphin cove, st johns, bohicket, ownes or manages ripley light and iop
