Cobaturage is the "Airbnb" of the boat, a community platform for connecting boat owners with people who want to share sea trips at an attractive price. The former wish to amortize their expenses and the latter, to discover the world of navigation at attractive prices. Cobaturage now has more than 5000 boats all over the world and is the leader in France in co-navigation.
Two entrepreneurs built this start-up: Aurélian Petit, 30 years old and Guillaume Deloffre, 32 years old, both passionate about boating. Aurélian Petit had the idea of Cobaturage when he saw his parents having to separate from their boat. When he had just retired, due to a lack of physical fitness and budget, his father made the decision to sell the family boat. If at that time the site had existed, he could have found an alternative to selling.
In general, a boat very rarely leaves the port (barely ten days a year) and its maintenance is expensive (each year 10% of the selling price). Cobaturage tries to bring solutions thanks to its community of lovers of water sports and this solution is based on sharing a boat of course but also a maritime experience. Registration, posting your ads online, searching for boats and contacting the owners: everything is free!
Cobaturage tries to satisfy as many people as possible:
- Owners benefit from a rapidly expanding platform that provides them with high visibility for their ad. It is better than renting for an owner who loves his boat too much to let him go or who knows his region too well not to let his tenants discover it!
- Passengers can enjoy a very varied offer at an affordable price: sailboat, catamaran, fishing boat or comfortable barge, you can find everything on Cobaturage. For more confidence, tenants can freely ask all their questions to the owners via our internal messaging system. And after each outing, members are evaluated, to reassure future users of the site.
With a view to further development, the site would be in the process of prospecting independent sales representatives in various countries, such as Spain and Portugal, and should soon launch a mobile application before the summer of 2016.
