Growing Boating

BOATING ALLIANCE
The Boating Industry Alliance of Australia is set to implement a strategy for growing boating in Australia. Marine Business talks to Alliance chairman Darren Vaux for details of the ambitious plan.

The Boating Industry Alliance of Australia was established as a way to pool resources and share common national strategies between each of the state's BIAs. Alliance chairman and newly appointed president of the NSW BIA Darren Vaux spoke to Marine Business during the recent Melbourne Boat Show outlining what goals the Alliance hopes the achieve.“We have enormous capacity in intellectual property within each of the states. But a lot of the issues we're facing are common and are multi state or national issues,” said Vaux.

“So we're using the Alliance as a coordinating framework and harnessing the resources of the all states. We're able to share information seamlessly across all the states. We're then able to take that information and advocate it at a state level and we combine it and advocate it nationally. So we're very much harnessing the combined resources of all the states,” he said.

“When you start to harness the type of effort and expertise from across the staes, you an achieve great things.”

Vaux said the key is for the Assocation to work out how to drive prosperity back into the boating industry.

“That solves everything – when our industry is prosperous our members are stronger and all of the issues competing with our industry can be addressed with that process,” he said.

Vaux said there will always be challenges and that the industry and will need to react quickly in order to move forward.

The Boating Industry Alliance of Australia has developed a three-tier strategy:

1. Grow recreational boating in Australia

The first part of this initiative is what the BIAA calls a schools program, which is to set to get children involved from a young age. Vaux said the idea was to have junior schools work with yachting clubs and associations to ensure that sailing and other boating pursuits are a available after school sports activity for children so they get to boating experience and to develop a love for boating.

Vaux said additionally the goal is to build marine studies and boating into curriculum at high school level.

“I recently went myself to see how one of these worked on one of their practical days in a school in Southern Sydney and it was fantastic to see. They do a marine studies program with a practical element,” said Vaux.

“Importantly, kids go home and talk to their parents and parents see the enthusiasm that the kids have in boating and see it a s a good way of connecting with the family, and we end up with families getting into boating.”

The BIAA will be launching a national boat club and that is a way of engaging with people already involved in boating.

“This club will provide them better information and better services on two platforms. First, it's privileged based, so if you're a member of the club you might get special access to boat shows, loyalty programs, etc. It's a way that we can connect with people and communicate with people already in boating and enhance their enjoyment of boating. The idea is to make it the portal for boating and the key is to drive opportunities. We can communicate to them our advocacies in trying to get better access to boating, better boat ramps, advocating on behalf on boater with marine parks, etc. At the same time we can consolidate all the other information boaters need, whether it's from other authorities, weather, events. We want the industry to be more event based so there's more happening and more things to do with your boat.”

But how will the BIAA enusre people sign up for a club, what incentives are there?

“People will engage in this club for two reasons. One, if there's a commercial reason to do so, some sort of loyalty program that offers a commercial benefit to them. Secondly, if it leads them to privilege,” said Vaux.

Vaux gave the example of premium credit card programs where you receive points. These programs have grown exponentially and is potentially something the industry could use as a model.

“I think that's something we have to recognise, that people really want that sort of privilege and opportunity, but we're not providing it at the moment. The more momentum we get, the better communication we have with our customers and we can represent them on issues, but we can get our members and our customers talking together and coming together and getting better outcomes.”

The other idea a boating experience day.

“They've been run successfully but we want to run them on national platform right across the country so we can get people experiencing it.”
“We need to set ourselves the challenge of doing all this in five years. And we can do that by taking a very strong and direct program.”

2. Strengthen our government advocacy and support for the industry

The second tier of the BIAA' goal is increase the level of advocacy between the industry and government. “The big issue for us is there are government policy issues whether its state based marine parks or federally, marine reserves, that are imposing restrictions on where you can boat and fish. We need to take a very determined view on those and ensure that our members interests are protected. We support the principals of these, but we think every decision made needs to be made objectively and on the basis of science. Often they talk about commercial fisheries and compensation for commercial fishers, but never any discussions about the consequences for recreational fishers and boaters – and the lifestyle consequences,” he said.

“Industry deals with it in a reactive sense in terms of its response, but proactively, we need to take a strategy that actually enshrines the right to boat and fish into legislation because it's an important part of Australian culture. So we're taking steps to develop policies that enshrine those rights that reflect the interest of millions of people in this country.”

Vaux said boaters and fishers are some of the best custodians of waterways, that they're the eyes and ears out there and who want the fisheries to be healthy.

“They want the water to be clean and are some of the strongest advocates for those objectives. But at the same time it's important that any decisions made to protect specific habits are done so based purely on science and not just drawing lines on a map,” he said.

The other element is infrastructure – boat ramps and services that support boating.

“We need to really drive strong advocacy to ensure this things are developed. We can't grow recreational boating without actually ensuring there's the infrastructure there that enables the industry to flourish.
“Within each state in Australia there needs to be a strategic plan that lays out what the needs are for boating related infrastructure across the state and mechanisms that deliver it. In reality there's an absence of that.

“We need to take a very strong view of education verse regulation. Regulation always brings things down to the lowest common denominator,but education raises the bar. State-by-state we've had success with that strategy but we just need to enhance it further and develop it,” said Vaux.

3. Development of career pathways and professional development

The final part of the Alliance's plan is to focus on building careers within the industry.

“This comes down to developing conduits for people to get work experience from year 10 at school. Having the proper career pathways defined so that parents who make decisions about their children's future and supporting their kids in doing what they want to do see the boating industry as a viable and prosperous career path frothier children.

“Cadetships that support that and get the best and brightest for the industry. And ongoing professional developments so we have proper ongoing training and education through the careers of people in our industry so that we keep up with thelatest technology.”

“It's a very bold vision, but our charter is to be proactive and we need to have plans that lead us in a positive direction,” Vaux concluded.