Marinas make up a $6 billion market across more than 10,000 sites in the United States. Although this indicates a negative 2% trend in growth from 2016 through 2021, 95% of marina CEOs reported that business conditions were expanding or stable in Q2 of 2021.
Part of maintaining a reputable and successful marina entails ensuring your customers and their property are safe from thieves or watercraft accidents. A GPS tracking system designed specifically for boat monitoring and marina managers is one of the best approaches!
Keep reading to learn more about common security risks marina managers face and how utilizing telematics solutions like geofencing software can mitigate them.
The word marina comes from the Latin word marinus, which was later adapted to Middle English to mean “seashore.” A marina is a dock or basin with moorings and general supplies, like fueling stations or cleaning equipment, for small boats and yachts. Marinas differ from harbors or ports in that they don’t deal with cargo ships or high-passenger volume vessels such as cruise ships.
Marinas can be located alongside the banks of a river connected to a lake or larger body of water, on the coast, or even inland. They’re typically privately owned and operated—for example, a yacht club—but can also be part of a resort or utilized by a municipality. Florida has the highest number of marinas with 450 businesses; New York and California follow with 415 and 221 marinas, respectively.
When managing a marina, there are plenty of threats and vulnerabilities you need to consider. Without staying informed on common security issues, you’re at risk for theft, loss of assets and equipment, and damage to your marina’s fleet of watercrafts.
Here are four common security risks you need to know about in your marina:
By the nature of storing a multitude of boats and watercraft and accounting for docks, walkways, observation decks, or other architectural features, marinas are often large or even massive in size.
Also, due to the inherent characteristics of boats that include varying shapes that protrude, there are lots of obstructions to typical surveillance cameras. As such, relying entirely on only a handful of cameras to act as your marina’s security strategy leaves room for improvement.
It’s no secret that owning a boat isn’t cheap—and criminals are eager to cash in on affluent, unsuspecting boaters. Because of this perception, marinas have the potential to attract criminal attention with the hopes of taking advantage of trusting patrons and flimsy security systems that are easy to bypass.
As a marina manager, your concerns extend beyond the physical perimeter of your marina—especially if you rent out boats or other watercrafts.
One common security risk is the operator of your rental boat being unfamiliar with the body of water they’re setting out on, and thus accidentally going into private property or being in strong currents that are unsafe for swimming.
Another concern for your marina—particularly rental boats—is keeping up scheduled maintenance of your watercraft to ensure you and your patrons get the most use out of them.
It’s important to follow an established timeline of servicing your boats; otherwise, you risk severe damage to your engines, worn-out parts, and other hazards that could be disastrous.
When your business depends on revenue from boat owners or people looking to rent watercrafts, it’s vital that you make boat monitoring and asset tracking a top priority.
Using GPS tracking for boats comes with a lot of advantages, including the following:
With GPS tracking systems, you can track individual boats and manage your marina as a whole from a comprehensive, easy-to-use dashboard. These insights can provide peace of mind as a marina manager since you’ll always know the exact location of your assets and can see the scope of your property, no matter where they are!
Only one out of 10 stolen boats are ever recovered; this statistic alone is reason enough to utilize a GPS tracking system! In the event your marina’s property is stolen, you’ll always have its exact location to communicate to local authorities for optimal chances of recovery.
Plus, thieves will be more likely to avoid boats that have signage indicating a remote monitoring system is in place. They want an easy target and getaway plan, not a difficult operation with high chances of being caught!
A GPS tracking system as implemented by your marina can also enable you to create a geofence for your watercraft, which essentially outlines a set perimeter in the water of where you allow your property to enter—or not. If the watercraft ventures beyond this invisible fence, you get a notification.
This capability is crucial in helping to define dangerous areas for boaters to avoid. In case the boat is rented to tourists who might be unfamiliar with the area, you’ll know when they might be heading toward a prohibited or hazardous area—such as a part of the water with dangerous currents—and you can take action.
GPS tracking systems can also keep track of your boat’s maintenance needs! Tracking down paper records for multiple boats at your marina is an incredibly inefficient use of time, especially when such an easy solution can handle all of it.
By implementing a GPS tracking system for boats and watercraft for rent at your marina, built-in alerts for maintenance needs can help you be proactive and save money and time from unscheduled maintenance.
For example, by tracking your watercraft’s battery levels, you can prevent your battery from depleting entirely and prolong its life so you can get the most use out of it.
Implementing a comprehensive GPS asset tracking system can streamline your asset management tasks like keeping track of maintenance schedules, plus reduce headaches from stressing about renters unknowingly getting into dangerous waters.
All of these capabilities result in you saving time and money while improving asset utilization at your marina. Having easy access to telematics data from a GPS tracking device gives you better control of your marina’s high-value assets.
At Rastrac, we offer a multitude of customizable software, devices, and tools to meet the needs of customers across numerous industries — most notably, GPS tracking and geofencing software for marinas. Whether you need to track trailers in the oil and gas industry, heavy equipment rentals, or the current location of maintenance/service vehicles, there’s a specialized Rastrac solution that can help!