We are incredibly excited to share with you our first-ever feature announcement, and this is a big one! We are announcing today that securing a dock space for rent on PierShare has now become so much easier with the launch of real time dock availability tracking!

As we've been growing PierShare, we've noticed an opportunity to develop a feature that can solve many of the pain points of the dock rental process as they exist today. These challenges are the following:

• Dock owners who post advertisements for a dock for rent must manually manage the listing or de-listing of their ads, which can be time-consuming.
• Boaters can never be sure of the true availability of a dock space, both in terms of whether the dock is generally available for rent or whether there is enough room at the space to fit their boats.
• Boaters who are interested in spaces that are currently occupied but are open to the idea of waiting until the current renter departs have no automated way of knowing exactly when the space frees up, and whether the newly created space is even big enough to fit their boat.
  
  

We are on a mission to build a true next-generation docking platform and are very excited to be taking the first steps towards solving the above problems.

How It Works

Tracking of General Dock Availability

Our new availability tracking feature now makes the clear distinction between docks that are available now, and those that are currently rented and thus available later, after the current occupant(s) leaves. Our systems are also smart enough to make the distinction between a boater who has committed to docking their boat at a space within the next 30 days, or whether there are a number of individuals casually looking at it.

PierShare's back-end docking technology, for the first-time ever in the marine industry, tracks the real-time availability of any single dock for rent and categorizes it appropriately so that you can have the confidence that when you see a dock listed as available on our platform you won't have to wonder about its availability. This also means that dock owners do not have to spend time posting and un-posting their dock listings - it all just happens automatically.

Tracking of Total Available Dock Space

The upgrades that we have made to the platform to track the general availability of the spaces are substantial, but we really wanted to take this feature to the next level by offering another first in the marine industry: PierShare now keeps track of the total available space for rent at listings by taking into account vessel size and whether a vessel has arrived or departed a particular space.

As an example, let's say you have a dock for rent with 100 feet of total available space and have enough room for 2-3 boats. If a 40 foot catamaran docks with you, the total available space designation will be dynamically updated the moment that the 40 foot catamaran secures the space, thus leaving approximately 60 feet left for other boats. Instead of worrying about needing to take down your listing or updating the total amount of available space manually, PierShare automatically classifies the dock as partially occupied and updates the total available space designation on the listing.

When enough boats are docked with you to the point where our systems determine that you have 22 feet or less of total available space remaining, your listing gets categorized as Fully Occupied. This will allow boaters who can afford to wait for your space to open up to get notified when it is available.

Smart Notifications for Newly Available Docks

PierShare has great docks available right now, but sometimes you stumble upon the perfect dock in a wonderful location that you'd love to be at on a long-term basis, if only it was available. Now with our new smart notification functionality you can sign up to be alerted when that space becomes available.

Our smart notification functionality works by tracking whether the boat(s) that is currently occupying the space you'd like to rent has departed. Once our platform receives confirmation from the boater or dock owner that the vessel has left, you'll receive an automated email notification. Because we are always tracking the total available space for all of our listings, we streamline the notification process by only notifying you if there is enough total available space for your particular vessel that you'd like to dock.

As an example, if you'd like to rent the 105' North Miami dock pictured above for your 75' motor yacht, and there are currently two 30' cruisers at the space, you will be notified when one or both of those cruisers have left. For the first time ever, boaters can rest assured that our systems are always tracking the empty space available at each of our listings, so if there is any opportunity to dock, we'll make sure that they can take advantage of it right away.

This is Just the Beginning

We're really excited to be launching real-time dock availability tracking as we feel it significantly improves the user experience on our platform. Going forward we plan to launch additional extensions of this functionality that will make it easier for dock owners to precisely measure their total available space, as well as give boaters more tools in order to make informed decisions on which dock is the best fit for them. Most importantly, real time dock availability tracking takes us closer to realizing our vision of changing the way that boaters discover and rent great dock spaces in their local communities, whether they would like to dock for one night, one month, or one year.