The International Council of Marine Industry Associations (ICOMIA) has released a guideline for marinas in navigating the digital transformation of the industry. The Smart Marinas Guide,  produced by ICOMIA Marinas Group (IMG) members, dissects the future of marinas, why digital transformation is critical to progress and what marinas can start doing now.

“The Smart Marinas Programme was first introduced to IMG in October 2019, in light of a pressing need for the marina industry to respond to technological developments,” says Martinho Fortunato, Chair of IMG. “[These developments include] digital transformation processes that enhanced efficiency and seamless user experiences all across the transportation and hospitality industries.”

To kickstart processes for the future work needed in terms of regulation, policy-making and development of best practices, IMG developed the guide to outline its vision of a ‘smart marina’ and define key terms.  

According to IMG, for a marina to be defined as ‘smart’, it must first have centralised digital data collection, through digital platforms and perform analysis of the collected data to generate relevant insights regarding operational statistics, trends and customer behaviour. It then must utilise these insights to make operations more efficient.

To stay afloat in today's market, marinas must efficiently handle various tasks while staying profitable and maintaining service quality. Becoming a ‘smart’ marina ultimately means becoming digitally interconnected and integrating with surrounding services and communities. This digital transformation will allow marinas to automate operations, predict market trends and meet clients’ needs more effectively.

“We realised that there is clearly considerable scope for ICOMIA to assume a global role in developing programs on crucial marina-related issues such as interconnection, data collection, and sustainability,” adds Fortunato.

After receiving feedback on the guide, IMG says it will continue to focus on the impacts of the concept of Smart Marinas in specific areas in the marina industry, and on producing guidelines for how marinas can better perform.

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