Barqo, the Dutch Airbnb for boats, acquires a local competitor

Amsterdam startup Barqo acquires its competitor Botentenhuur.nl. The boat platform, known as the Airbnb for boats, is steering toward market leadership in online boat rentals.

“The online platform of Botentehuur.nl is, in fact, comparable to Barqo, but it only connects commercial boat renters to tenants. With this acquisition, we are realizing a substantial increase in the number of domestic boats and can scale up even faster,” according to Floris van Hoogenhuyze, co-founder of Barqo.

Barqo takes over fifty commercial boat rental companies, the booking software and the URL of Botentehuur.nl. “We will further perfect this ‘Sofware as a Service’-solution so that even more commercial parties can rent out their boats via this system. That way, sharing boats is also attractive and profitable for them”, says Van Hoogenhuyze.

With the acquisition of Botentehuur.nl Barqo is not only working with private boat owners but also with 50 leading commercial boat rental companies. As a result, Barqo now offers 1,700 boats in the Netherlands.