Hailed as the up and coming ‘Uber of boats’, Boat Odyssey is a Guadalupe based start-up that connects boat enthusiasts with boat owners. For a fee, customers are able to enjoy the experience owning a boat brings without the commitment, and owners are able to keep their boat in good working order and make money when it’s not in use. Boat Odyssey provides a peer-to-peer online marketplace for customers in the West Indies region to connect and start the hire process
Launching a one-of-a-kind start-up in an exotic location like the French West Indies makes one curious about co-founder and CEO Luis Castanheira’s original inspiration. But he assures me, “there are no pirates in this story, but there is a story about love”.
After moving from Singapore and settling in the West Indies, Castanheira decided to get together with friends and family and enjoy the beautiful Caribbean Sea. It was the memories he created with them that day that inspired him to found Boat Odyssey.
“Their smile and contagious happiness…that feeling is the feeling that we want to bring to every single person that is or will be willing to have a Boat Odyssey experience,” he said.
Castanheira wants to make boating an easy and affordable experience for people from all walks of life.
“Boating access is limited by experience, money and by slow and complicated processes,” he muses. “So we created a platform that simplifies it and makes this experience easy, safe and more trustworthy in order to welcome anyone to boating”.
While Castanheira’s passion for the maritime industry is a driving factor behind Boat Odyssey, the entrepreneur also wanted to take advantage of an untapped market.
“My passion about ocean and boating enabled me to be connected to the marine industry since my early days,” he says. “Driving factors were also the market growth, the size of the industry and the limited access to the boating industry that made me get together the right people to transform the €154 billion Marine Industry through collaboration,” he says.
Since its inception in 2016, Boat Odyssey has been working to become the leading global boating community portal with the aim of transforming the marine industry through collaboration.
In addition to speaking at the upcoming Global Classifieds Summit in Miami, Castanheira is excited about what’s happening in the world of Boat Odyssey in the coming months, including launching the company officially.
“We just signed the contract with one of the biggest international insurances so every single boat, captain and client are covered on each rental,” he says.
“Also, our database of boat owners, captains and industry partners has been growing daily. And as the demand has been high through our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts, boat rentals have already started.
“There’s more good news to come. . We are still looking for the right investors to join our board and help us growing worldwide exponentially”.
