Hoist the sails of your boat rental business

To start renting boats online, you need a website where your guests can create online reservations. Boat rental software such as Twice makes this easy to do. With Twiceyou get a ready-made website with a built-in online booking system. First, add the products and services you want to rent and sell to Twice and determine the quantities in Twice's inventory management system. That way, your availabilities are always up to date, and you don't get overbooked. Next, set up your payment options so your customers can book and pay their rentals in advance. With Twice Payments, you can also define deposit rules for your products. Once everything is set up, you can integrate Twice into your existing website or use Twice as a standalone website.

Starting a boat rental business requires a lot of planning, preparation, and setting up processes. First, you need to make a business plan. Your business plan includes a description of your business, market and competitor analysis, financial plan, and marketing plan. It is also essential to consider how you will organize your processes, such as fleet management, order processing, and boat maintenance. Read more from our guide on how to start a boat rental business →

Generally, boat rental businesses can be profitable and enjoy high profit margins. Still, just like with any company, profitability comes down to your business's income and expenditure structure. It is also worth noting that boat rentals are seasonal in many countries, which should be considered when assessing the business's revenue potential. Incomes are primarily determined by whether there is a demand for boat rental services in your area. One of the essential factors in ensuring demand is location. The financing costs of the rental fleet, rent of marina and business space, insurance, and staff salaries are typically the most significant expenses. To better understand your financial estimates, we recommend looking at ourguide to financial planning and budgeting →

The difference between renting and chartering a boat is that a boat rental comes without the crew. Boat rentals are typically shorter in duration, and the boats are smaller in size. Whereas charter boats generally are larger vessels, rental times are longer, and customers have more room to customize the experience. Twice suits both business models.

It is strongly recommended that you start using boat rental software from the early days of your business. Cloud-based software like Twice allows boat rental and charter operators to manage reservations, rental fleet, and other business areas in one place instead of spreading all the information across several apps and spreadsheets. This gives a better overview of the business and complete control of the rental process.