Why Boat Shows Are Starting to Look Like CES
Boats, Screens, and Software: The New Boat Show Experience
The center of gravity at boat shows has been shifting for a couple of seasons, and this year it is hard to miss.
The biggest and flashiest boats still draw people in, but a lot of the energy on the floor has moved toward the screens. it is now common to see a crowd watching a boat ease itself into a slip on a video loop, or someone running a demo of an app that handles the lights, the stereo, or the generator from a phone.
There may be no better example than the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the world’s largest technology trade show. The massive annual event in Las Vegas is where companies unveil the latest in consumer electronics, AI, mobility, robotics, smart devices, and emerging technologies. It's also becoming an emerging hub for the marine industry to demonstrate its emerging capabilities. The overlap marks a new chapter.
The shift in trade show design and delivery is worth discussing as the fall event circuit ramps up. It points to something the industry is still fleshing out about its future.
The old playbook
At their core, most boat shows run on essentially one idea: roll out fleets of the nicest, most technologically advanced, and best looking boats you have, put them where everybody can see them, and let buyers climb aboard to envision themselves owning one. The specs are put on the placard. The engines sit nobly on the transom.
That approach is not going anywhere, and still rightfully has its place, so builders would be foolish to abandon it. But, it is no longer the only thing that draws people from the aisle into the booth.
What is pulling crowds now
More and more, the busiest booths are the ones with something happening on a virtual display. There is a greater focus on complements to the boats, or more specifically, tech that can simulate and/or advance the boating experience. Things like high-end digital displays showing a boat docking itself, a screen that guides owners through an engine fault in words instead of a warning light, or an app that reads out the fuel level or starts the generator while the owner is still in the parking lot.
These are no longer conceptual simulators that get shown once and never go into production. The surge in new tech is already on production boats today, and marine companies understand that, which is why the marketing is following suit. Put two boats of similar size and price next to each other and they are likely look and run about the same. The real difference, increasingly, sits in the software.
Why now
Part of the new trend is that traditional areas are relatively consistent. Hull shapes, engines, and build materials are all fairly settled at this point, with the exception of some nuance. You do not often get a dramatic year over year jump in hull designs in the current era, not at the mainstream recreational level, and certainly not at the production level. Electronics do not have that limit. At the current rate of advancement, a builder can put out a real improvement to docking or navigation every year or two, and many of them do.
Buyers have changed as well. Plenty of newer or younger boaters shopping today grew up comparing phones and cars based on the software as much as hardware. That mindset comes with them onto the dock. Nobody blinks now when a customer asks about the mobile app for helm control before they ask about the beam or the draught.
There is a herd effect on top of that, by virtue of human nature. Once a company gets their latest tech development written up somewhere the average boater would not expect to see boating being discussed, like at a major mainstream event like CES, the rest of the field notices and starts angling for the same attention. And the same capability.
What it means for the shows
The floors of tradeshows are going to keep tilting toward something closer to a tech launch. More live demonstrations. More booths organized around a single feature or system rather than a single boat, and more of the language that comes from consumer electronics working its way into the cultural dialogue.
For buyers, that is largely a good thing. You come away with a better sense of what a boat can really do, and you're at the cusp of modern technological advancement at both land and sea. It does change what you need to ask, though. The question is not only what the boat ships with. It is whether the software will keep improving after purchase, and whether the demo that looked flawless on a show floor behaves the same way on a windy afternoon at your own dock.
Where this leaves things
Trade shows have always been built around the newest advancements in a given year. What has changed is the meaning of the word. It used to point to a redesigned hull, a bigger engine, or more amenities. Now it points, more often, to a change in how the boat thinks rather than how it moves.
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