Rosehill kicks off boat show season

ROSEHILL Boat Show, Sydney’s popular trailer boat show was held in early March with visitor numbers and exhibitor attendance remaining on par with 2010’s show.

Marine Business visited the show on the Sunday afternoon as exhibitors were wrapping up. Most dealers were reporting a strong Saturday and slightly slower Sunday. All exhibitors were expecting good follow up sales over the following weeks.

The weather wasn’t ideal, although as one exhibitor said: “Bad weather can sometimes work in our favour … people come along, escape the weather, and look at buying a boat.”

NSW BIA marketing and events manager Domenic Genua said this year’s visitor numbers were 10,992.

“Whilst this was a little down on 2010, it was about the same as 2009 and in the last three years we’ve exceeded the 10,000 visitor mark,” said Genua.
“If you keep in mind that in 2008 we only had just over 5,000 visitors it shows that our strategy to go for a free show for visitors and change the way we went to market has really worked.

“The show delivered a great range of products and appealed to the interest of a lot of people. We created a meeting point for a buyer and a seller. Rose Hill in that regard fulfilled that objective of bringing those two groups together,” said Genua.

Marine Business spoke to Boab Boat Hire director Anthony Gelfius who’s been exhibiting at the show for seven years. Gelfius said Rosehill remains one of the company’s stronger shows to attend  because of its size and target market.

“It’s a target market of blokes in tinnies and it’s a nice size show, not too big so people can walk around and not miss anything,” said Gelfius.
“For us it’s a great show, we had a lot of franchise enquiries and boat rental enquires come through,” he said.

Gelfius said the BIA’s decision to make entry free was a positive thing which has generated further interest in boating and long term leads for future shows.