Will Barqo and Click & Boat become the “Airbnb of boating”?

This week, two online boat sharing platforms, Barqo and Click & Boat, announced that they will join forces. By integrating their platforms, the Dutch and French startup want to make big waves (pun intended) in the international online boat rental sector.

Largest community

With their collaboration, Barqo and Click & Boat claim to have the largest community of boat renters in Europe; as the French startup Click & Boat offers more than 4000 yachts and boats to a community of 90.000 members, Dutch-based Barqo offers over 4000 boats to a community of 30.000 members. Both startups operate in different parts of Europe: Barqo has Dutch users renting also in Spain, Greece, Croatia, Italy and is looking to reach new users from northern Europe renting in the mediterranean. Click & Boat focuses on the south of Europe, to cater to both renters and sailors, although they also offers boats and yachts from commercial renters.

Platform integration

Before the collaboration, both startups took a fifteen percent commission on each transaction, which is typically 240 euros on average. After integrated their platforms, the companies will split the revenue. Both startups offer insurance together in deal struck with local market leaders: Barqo with Centraal Beheer, Click & Boat with Allianz. The growth numbers for both startups are sound: Barqo grew 666%, year-on-year, Click & Boat 500.

“Learn from each other”

As Floris van Hoogenhuyze (co-founder Barqo) puts it:

“This collaboration enables our boating community to rent exclusive boats and yachts in France. Furthermore, I believe that the cooperation with our French colleagues at Click & Boat gives us a chance to actively develop and learn from each other. It feeds our desire to expand our sharing platform to meet a bigger audience, across-borders.’’

“Airbnb of Boating”

Edouard Gorioux (co-founder Click & Boat) says:

“We want to become the “Airbnb of boating” and enable people to rent peer-to-peer boats everywhere in the world. Barqo is a great addition to our partner network as we work towards taking our business beyond national boundaries and entering the Northern European market. We are impressed with what Barqo has achieved in the peer-to-peer boat sharing industry abroad in such a short amount of time since they were founded in 2014.”

Big ambitions

The sharing economy, whether it’s cars, apartments or boats, is a typical winner-takes-almost everything kind of market. The ambition to be the next AirBnB of boating is a big one, but with the numbers and bigger European presence, it’s interesting what will come of this collaboration.