Almost all of us who have anything to do with pleasure boats, wonder how is the boat market going to be in the future? And where is it going from here? Do pleasure boats have any future? Will the trend of owning and selling boats be a larger market or will it suffocate like many luxury products due to the roller coaster ride of the world's economy? What will particularly happen in Asia? Asia being the big part of world's economy, what part will it play in boating industry? Which country will be the major market? China, India, Indonesia perhaps? Importantly what steps should be taken today, in order to create a better market in these countries for the future.
In Hong Kong we are realizing the obvious saturation of boating market and almost all dealers and manufacturers of boats are pointing towards China. A lot of European manufacturers are also pointing at India. Making these 2 countries the biggest potential boating markets.
Let's talk about China first and realize that in 2005 we had big hopes for the boating business in China, we thought that the boating industry will be huge by the year 2010. Well, we are in 2010 now and China clearly has not picked up to that level of prediction, so the market is still slower than what the lot of industry experts had predicted 4 or 5 years ago. The reason behind that is China's rules and regulations in pleasure boat industry. Taxation and licensing rules are very unclear in China. As a matter of fact, the rules are different for different states in China. Mainly for new boats, tax is about 40% of the boat' value.
The infrastructure however, is simply fantastic, China's development of marinas are in the best speed that one can hope for. But what is missing in this picture are the number of pleasure boats that are floating on the waters of China. There are definitely buyers for a high end expensive yacht, but the the support and maintenance of that yacht still not expertised, is uneasy and therefore costly. In any country even in Ho