Wednesday, Nov 20, 2013

Dubai: Organisers of this weekend’s Pre-Owned Boat Show, starting today at the Dubai Creek Marina, hope it will build on the success of last year’s show.

“We aim to have a bigger show; we aim to have bigger boats that people are actually looking for,” said Abdullah Ali Al Noon, the Marina Operations Manager for the Dubai Creek Golf & Yacht Club.

Last year’s Pre-Owned Boat Show saw more than 7,000 visitors attend, with 29 boats being sold at a combined cost of Dh9.5 million.

This year’s show is the fourth instalment of the annual event. Organisers were able to facilitate the purchase of 29 pre-owned vessels in 2012, while a year earlier they managed to sell 21.

Al Noon said the show is filling a gap in a growing market for both newcomers and existing boat owners. “The Pre-Owned Boat Show is very successful in encouraging new clients to the boating Industry. We have a lot of families in here and we have recurring customers,” he said.

Families, who are just starting their “boating culture”, as Al Noon puts it, will often opt for a boat in the 25 to 27 feet range. “Then you have the people that have had a small boat and want to buy bigger,” he said.

The Pre-Owned Boat Show displays boats of all sizes ranging from entry level 20 to 30 feet range all the way to the “elite” 65+ feet.

But the biggest seller sits in the middle, Al Noon said. “The fast moving boats, the 45 to 55 feet boats are very popular, these sizes are what we target to display,” he said.

Since the fallout of the 2008-09 global financial crisis, demand for pre-owned boats in the Gulf has steadily increased.

“The only reason we have the Pre-Owned Boat Show is because there is a big market in the country. We had a lot people asking us post-2008 ‘I want to buy a second boat’ so we were always referring them back to the broker,” Al Noon said.

One such broker, John Bush, Partner & Founder at Bush & Nobles, said the switch in demand from new to used boats had taken place in over the past few years.

“If you go back four years a lot of people were buying new boats, but now the focus is on the used market,” he said.

For Bush & Nobles, customers are in the market for the overnight 35 feet boats that have a small cabin, bed, kitchen, and bathroom and enough room to fit up to eight people in the cockpit.

Bush said that these boats can cost anywhere between Dh300,000-Dh600,000, but the demand for the mid-range was not solely from existing boat owners. He said 50 per cent of his customers had never previously owned a boat.

Customers may be in the market for the larger 35 feet boat but Bush said the highest seller for Bush & Nobles is still the smaller cabin boats that cost Dh200,000.

While the second-hand market has seen a surge since 2008, Erwin Bamps, Chief Operating Officer at Gulf Craft, said the boat market in the UAE and Gulf was too small to distinguish between second hand and new.

“What you see happening in the pre-owned market is always a little bit ahead of the new boat sales … [and] whether it’s pre-owned or new, it is linked first and foremost to the status of consumer confidence,” he said.

The Pre-Owned Boat Show runs from November 21 to 23 at Dubai Creek Marina.

By Alexander ?Cornwell Staff Reporter

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