New app offers boat club management solutions

Building on its established success providing management solutions for drystack marinas, Boat Cloud is now offering an application specifically created to digitize the management of boat clubs.

BoatCloud unveiled its new app, ClubHub, about two months ago. The app is designed for boat club operators of all types and adapts to the different aspects of each individual club.

The app gives the customer the ability to use a smartphone, tablet or other device to schedule their boat club outing and all of their needed provisions with ease. Everything feeds through a live dashboard and allows boat club staff to be perfectly in sync with all customers’ reservation details.

“It is extremely robust in terms of its capabilities in managing all different membership plan types, rental scenarios, club rules, club hours of operation, provisioning the boats, all of the valet and concierge capabilities that anybody could ever dream of,” said Todd Wagner, vice president and director of marketing at BoatCloud. “Every rule or if-then formula that you can dream up in a boat club environment, our platform manages those scenarios.”

The initial concept was unveiled two and a half years ago at the same time as the launch of BoatCloud’s StackTrack application, which was designed specifically for drystack marinas to eliminate phone calls, clipboards and log books as a scheduling mechanism. StackTrack received positive feedback upon release but many drystack marinas expressed a need for a management solution centered on their boat clubs and rental fleets.

“The need for real-time scheduling was more prevalent in the club and rental fleet segment,” said Wagner.

This led to BoatCloud’s development of ClubHub. With the recent unveiling, the app is now in its complete form.

StackTrack has experienced moderate success, with a national and international presence that includes 40 marinas in the United States, six in Australia, two in New Zealand, one in Dubai and one in Saudi Arabia. Interestingly, BoatCloud has never marketed its products internationally. Wagner attributes StackTrack’s international presence to “the beauty of modern cloud-based technology.”

Feedback for the ClubHub app has been very positive. Operators have enjoyed the benefits of a product specifically designed for boat clubs and its rules, rather than a generic “off the shelf” appointment engine used by other types of businesses. ClubHub is in several clubs across the U.S. and is projected to continue growing.

Wagner notes that the industry can be slow to adapt to new technologies and become overly concerned about technological malfunctions. He said those instances are rare, if they occur at all: BoatCloud’s Internet connection has been offline for a total of twelve minutes over the two and a half years of StackTrack’s history.

What Wagner is more concerned about is making the process easier for customers to get on the water. Instances of items getting lost or misunderstood are much more common than technological unreliability. Wagner has heard story after story from marina staff about internal miscommunication and upset customers. ClubHub replaces all of those potential errors and allows staff members to better understand customers’ expectations.

“[Marina operators] feel like they’re married to their clipboards, their spreadsheets and their processes. They’re very fearful of implementing to modern technology,” said Wagner. “The end goal for [BoatCloud] is to make boating more enjoyable and make it easier to use a boat – whether it’s the boat you own and store in a marina or you’re a member of a club. We want boating to be easier, more hassle-free. … I think customers not only desire but I think they deserve better communication.”

For more information on ClubHub and to view a full video tour, visit www.boatcloud.com/clubhub