Marine Industries Global Market Analysis - Marine Institute

70 MARINE INDUSTRIES GLOBAL MARKET ANALYSIS
Another way of calculating the value of world marine tourism could be to apply a
multiplier to the Leisure Boating Industry Revenues to estimate ‘Marine Tourism’
but this approach was not found to be viable. 43
10.3 EUROPEAN MARKET
We value marine tourism in Western Europe at €72bn in 2004. Over the five years
to 1999 this totalled €328bn.We expect growth to continue its long-term trend of
3% annually, and over the period 2005-2009 to total €393bn.
Within Europe, again the only available data for any form of marine tourism is
the ICOMIA statistics for the sales of boats and related equipment & accessories.
New leisure boat sales for Ireland totalled €14 million in 2003 compared to
€324 million for the UK.
10.4 MARINE LEISURE BOATING
Marine ‘Leisure Boating’ is a major sub-sector which includes boat sales, repair
& building, marina operators, yacht charter and chandlery.
According to BMF (British Marine Federation) statistics the British marine leisure
boating industry grew by 8.5% in 2004, increasing its turnover to a total of
£1.9 billion (€2.85bn). 44 In six consecutive years of growth from 1999 to 2004,
the revenue of the UK leisure boating industry has increased by 57%.
The industry has also shown considerable strength in the export market, growing by
5.6% and bringing in £839 million (€1.26bn) to the UK economy.
The BMF is forecasting further growth in 2005 of 3.3% which would take total
industry revenues to over £2 billion (€3bn) for the first time.The industry employs
approximately 30,000 people.
Leisure boating involves craft of many sizes, from the sailing dingy to the superyacht.
Superyachts (yachts greater than 80 feet in length), represent a particularly important
sector for some countries with 651 presently on order worldwide. Market leaders are
Italy, the US, the Netherlands, the UK,Taiwan, Germany and New Zealand.
The development of the sector in Taiwan is particularly interesting as the leisure
boatbuilding sector has been in decline. Increasing costs caused the leisure
boatbuilding sector to fall from $200 million in 1987 to $75 million in 1994 and 70%
of the yards closed.The remaining players ventured into luxury yacht production and
43
Ireland is the only country that there is available data on which to make this comparison.The boating industry is of varying
importance to tourism in general, by country (Ireland: 12%, UK: 2% & US: 5%).This is probably due to the leisure boat industries
in different countries varying massively in their make up and overall size. For example, new boat sales make up different proportions
of the leisure boating industry (Ireland: 14%, UK: 19% & USA: 35%).There are also likely to be big differences between regions,
especially comparing the developed and developing world. For these reasons, this approach was not used.