Baltimore Boat Show Shows Strength
While the hard-core racers were in Key West, the balance of the mid-Atlantic crowd was engaged in the Baltimore Boat Show which for the first time included a special 25,000 square foot Sailfest section and was condensed to four days (as opposed to nine days in previous years). The Show featured all 300,000 square feet of exhibition space at the Baltimore Convention Center and included more than 700 powerboats, sailboats, and personal watercraft. The formula appears to have worked.
Event organizers reported this morning that the January 23-27 event recorded record-breaking attendance while exhibitors reported their strongest sales in over a decade. The SpinSheet and PropTalk team were distributing magazines throughout the Show and agreed with the positive assessment.
Total attendance for the five-day Show was 21,544, a six-percent increase over the total attendance for the nine-day 2007 show. Saturday, January 26 was the highest single-day attendance in the Show’s 54-year history. Attendance on each day was at least double the attendance for the same day of the 2007 Show.
According to organizers, boat sales at the Show were strong and exceeded exhibitor expectations. Skip Bennett of Hartley Marine was among the impressed exhibitors. He reports, “The show was huge for us. The place was packed, and we needed more sales people. We sold more boats in a single day than any other single day in the past 10 years.”
Among the largest boats sold at the Baltimore Boat Show was a 46-foot Island Packet 465 offered by Gratitude Yachting Center. The $722,000 sale capped “A show that has exceeded our expectations in terms of crowd volume, quality of buyers, and sales,” says Gratitude Yachting Center’s Founder and President Ed Kurowski. “People are telling us that now’s the time to buy the boat of their dreams.”
Pauline Kulaj, Mid-Atlantic Event Manager for Marine Max, which had 14 boats on display in its 7000 square foot exhibit space, says, “The Show has been awesome. We sold more boats this year in five-days than we sold last year in the nine-day show.”
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