Mike Derrett International Consultant in Boat Marketing
 
 

Editorial

The International Council of Marine Industry Associations (ICOMIA) Annual Industry statistics are widely acknowledged as the most authoritative and reliable source of information available on the worldwide recreational boating Industry. Compiled by the Marine Industry Association (MIA) members of ICOMIA, the information comes from organisations in close contact with the industry at the ‘coal face’. All the MIA members are manufacturers of boats, engines, and equipment and service providers in the marine leisure business. This statistics report represents information from the twenty one major marine leisure markets in the world estimated to represent over 90% of the global business in the sector.

Gathering statistics in a fragmented and diversified industry, composed mainly of many small companies, is never easy, but over the years ICOMIA has perfected the process and the resulting information is used extensively within the industry and also as a reference by those on the fringe, interested in investing or needing to work with the sector.

An important part of this report are the confidence surveys that provide qualitative summaries of the twenty one individual markets, with the inherent lag of the quantitative surveys, these provide an up to date ‘snapshot’ of the markets as of July 2006. Key trends from these are surveys are:

  • Sales of Trailer boats, sailing dinghies and Personal Water Craft are down in most markets.
  • Lack of berthing facilities is a problem in the majority of markets, although most are positive about moves to rectify the situation.
  • Sales are generally up in financial terms but down in units, showing the swing to larger size boat and engine sales. A reduction in outboard motor sales in the key markets of the USA, France and the UK also highlights this trend.
  • Economic confidence in the industry for the next 2-3 years is strong with only two countries, the UK and Portugal showing a negative trend.

 

Of increasing interest to the industry are the new boating markets in the Gulf, China and India, several new MIA’s are in prospect for these markets and their development is  being actively supported by ICOMIA. Initiatives already undertaken by ICOMIA have included industry conferences in Dubai in 2005 in conjunction with the Dubai World Trade Centre and the Boat Tech China conference in Guangzhou in conjunction with Suntec Integrated Media . It is the intention of ICOMIA to see statistics on these new markets available in the future, making the work of ICOMIA truly global.

 
By kind permission of ICOMIA
 

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