Why no place to rent a Hobie Mirage drive kayak

I have twice sold couples on Hobie boats with the Mirage drive but a problem is that there is no place within 90 miles to try one out despite living in the Monterey/Santa Cruz area. It also strikes me as odd that in a place like Monterey with its Cannery Row and world famous aquarium and plentitude of marine life that no one rents Mirage drive equipped kayaks.

It would seem to be a tremendous marketing opportunity to provide the millions of tourists that pass through the area each year with the opportunity to pedal rather than paddle along the shoreline. And not just in Monterey but in many coastal areas around the USA where tourists rent kayaks to paddle and have not a clue that the Hobie boats even exist.

Rental operators prefer to use very basic equipment, although there are some excursion outfits that use Hobie Mirage kayaks. Rental equipment just gets trashed.

In your area (Santa Cruz) has a dealer near the harbor.

KAYAK CONNECTION
SANTA CRUZ, CA 95062
1-831-479-1121

...and another further down the coast:

KAYAK CONNECTION
MOSS LANDING, CA 95039
1-831-724-5692

_________________
Matt Miller
Former - Director of Parts and Accessory Sales
Warranty and Technical Support
Hobie Cat USA
(Retired 11/7/2022)

Many of the dealers in south Florida rent out mirage kayaks, I know economy tackle in sarasota rents them, and for a small additional fee deliver them to the water for you. I have also seen them for rent at smathers beach in key west Florida from I think sunset water sports. Sunset also rents Hobie waves and I think a getaway from the same location.
I have a nephew who works at a big resort here in sarasota where they provide Hobie mirage kayaks and a couple waves for their registered guests use. He tells me they have the mirage drives but hardly anyone ever asks for them, most just ask for and use the paddles, you know the saying 'you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him pedal' (lol).
Key west is a major cruise ship destination port (the only one in the us), I have suggested to Hobie several times now that this would be a great location for a Hobie owned Hobie shop where guests can rent Hobie kayaks, TI's, and sup's for the day. My wife has a store just off Mallory square and the get on some days as many as 8,000 people walking past their store all looking for stuff to do. It would be a fantastic place to rent a TI, a Hobie mirage kayak or Hobie SUP's for the day. However it is very expensive there (we have a house there), getting on the cruise ships sponsored excursions list is extremely expensive, and rental space ( for a surf/ rental shop) is out of this world expensive.
So the only scenario that would work would be something Hobie corporate owned and sponsored. I have always contended that Hobie has a brand recognition problem, what better way than to let vacationers use their boat for the day, then when they get back home, what do you think they are going to want to buy..... ( a TI, or a Hobie mirage, or a Hobie SUP of course).
98% of the people who go to key West are just there to have fun for a day or two, so the likely hood of someone actually buying a TI there would be slim to nill so the whole affair would never make any sense for an independent dealer, but I contend that if they rent one for the day and have a blast when they get home what do you think they are going to want to go out and buy (if I had to guess at least 1/3 of the visitors are from foreign lands).
We cruise a lot (3-4 cruises a year sometimes) and being able to rent a TI at any of the royal carribian cruise ports would be a huge attraction. Currently your only option is either a jetski, or one of those square peddle boats that seats two people (everyone has seen them).
Another big one would be Disney world, we are season pass holders there, and usually are there at least once a month, they currently have for rental on their many lakes, small power boats for rent for people to go out on their lakes and hop from park to park (pretty silly and so 80's thinking). If Hobie were able to get the contract there and throw those other idiots out they would catch up with the times). My wife's company also has a store in Disney World so we know all the ins and outs there as well. Only Hobie could do this (corporate owned), because just like key west 99% of the people there are from other places and mostly other lands, and you can't baggage check a TI at the airport, so there is little opertunity to sell kayaks as an independent dealer (where they make their money).
My 2 cents
Bob

Finding a scarcity of even fishing kayaks in FL to rent, Economy Tackle just got themselves a new customer. Thanks for the info.

We rented a tandem at Lake Natoma in Sacramento. That is a bit of a drive from your area, but it sold us on the Mirage Drive.

Actually the owner of Kayak Connection told me when I arrived as scheduled on a Monday morning to demo an Outback that it had been sold over the weekend. I told him that I phoned for weeks until one was in stock and then was told that the store was too busy on weekends to handle demos. So I drove the 90 miles to Oakland to demo and buy two Revo 13 boats (and $1500 dollars in extras).

If the rental business is the most profitable segment it would makes sense to get more dollars per rental by upgrading people to a pedal boat. The people on this forum decided it was worth paying a $1000 to $2000 premium to buy a Hobie with the Mirage drive but question the durability of the drive or desirability for someone renting a boat to go out along the Monterey city front.

What is it about a Hobie that makes them too fragile for use with a rental fleet? I don't understand this "reasoning."

I would think that Hobie would see the rental business as a way to encourage dealers to have boats on hand for their potential customers to try before they buy. From San Luis Obispo up the coast to San Francisco there is only CCK in Oakland where one can demo a Hobie kayak. Seem like a missed marketing opportunity that would pay for itself.

I wouldn't necessarily call them "fragile", it's just very easy for first-time users to abuse them and possibly damage them. My local kayak shop has them at demo days all the time, and will even rent them. They also have a stack of pedal drives that have been wrecked - often by young children!

Most commonly people try to pedal when they're in too shallow of water. The blades hit the bottom, and instead of letting up they keep mashing on the pedal to "make it go", bending the masts. Sometimes the chains slip.

It's also common to see the rudder left cleated down as they return to shore. If that doesn't cause damage, then someone else hops on and shoves off backward while the rudder is stuck in the mud.

Apparently there's an outfit in Fiji that rents them... just in case you were looking for an excuse

I have to also note that most common rental places just don't want to do any maintenance. Their gear gets trashed.

Virgin Kayaks on St Croix does eco-tours with Mirage kayaks... awesome!

http://www.virginkayaktours.com/

Gotta see the phosphorescent algae at night tour!

http://www.virginkayaktours.com/Salt_River_Bay_Kayak_Tours.php

_________________
Matt Miller
Former - Director of Parts and Accessory Sales
Warranty and Technical Support
Hobie Cat USA
(Retired 11/7/2022)

I can rent a Harley motorcycle from a local shop or a 10-speed bicycle in Monterey. I can rent a Bobcat, power tiller, concrete drill, or even a Ferrari with no difficulty and these items are much more likely to be damaged than a plastic boat out on the water.

In some ways a rental problems would be a great source of information and faster feedback on product weaknesses that need to be addressed by Hobie product engineers.

Renting a standard paddle kayak in Monterey is a more labor intensive effort as the renters need a spray skirt, PFD, 3mm wetsuit, and instruction on how to get back inside the kayak should they flip it. A sit on top Hobie only needs to have the pedal setting done for the person.

It is also a matter of money and with a paddle boat the $600 cost is recovered after 12 rentals and that can be done in the first month. Renting a Hobie would require charging more but as with anything else if people see the value (as with a video in the kayak shop) or see lots of other people out on the bay pedaling around it would be very enticing. Millions of people that visit the Monterey aquarium would be looking out at Hobie boats going by along Cannery Row. What great advertising and it would be free advertising.

Odd that Hobie invests so much in its programs to get kayak anglers and hardcore sailors into Hobie boats but can't see the value of getting the general public interested in their products.

But then at this time I can't even walk into one of the 6 kayak shops in the Monterey and Santa Cruz areas and see a Hobie boat much less demo or rent one.

In my experience the first thing anybody does who get in a Hobie kayak is to try to pedal as hard as they can "to see how fast it will go"; the next thing they do is to rock it to side to side to see how stable it is; then, when they come into shore, they routinely forget to pull the drive up and are quite happy just to pedal right to the edge of the land to step out of the boat, with absolutely no regard to the depth of water under the boat... and this despite having been told only minutes beforehand what to do and what not to do and why not.

That is why, whenever I let anybody demo my boats (and I do this regularly) I NEVER let them launch the boat themselves - I always set them off in thigh deep water (and never in anything other than perfect conditions) - and I ALWAYS watch and wait and go out to meet them to take the drive out, raise the rudder, etc before they drive the boat and the drive back up the beach.

It is not that Hobie's kayaks or drives are fragile (though some things are relative: in other words during a contact between a Hobie fin mast and a planet - in this case Earth - the fin mast is likely to come off worst and in this context might be described as "relatively fragile") it is just that a whole lot of the population have next to zero notion about how to operate a boat, especially one which is on the one hand small, simple, slow and apparently just like a normal kayak - which most people already think they instinctively 'know' how to operate. As opposed to a vehicle rental where, at least in theory, the customer will have some sort of licence to demonstrate a minimum level of competence in controlling and awareness in managing the vehicle. (A Harley to Hobie comparison might be: what if the Harley rental customer fails to kick the stand out when getting off the bike - who will pay for the damage - not dissimilar to forgetting to lift the drive out when returning to shore I would have thought - but I would bet that a kayak rental customer would really gripe about paying for a replacement fin mast)

So IMO it is not surprising that nobody particularly wants to rent these boats out as opposed to renting out a 'normal' kayak where there is pretty much nothing to go wrong and nothing for a customer to think about.

I also note that when I hire a car (which I do regularly for work) I can't hire one without insurance, the terms of which are so completely one-sided that in the event of someone damaging the car when it is parked, I will end up paying a huge excess. I am sure that this will be the same for renting a Harley.

Sure I guess that there will be an insurance company out there that might be willing to offer insurance terms for Hobie kayak rentals but I wonder if the customers will be able to understand why they are being asked to pay the premiums and I imagine that the rental company will soon get fed up with arguing the toss about how fins/fin masts don't just bend/break without hitting something and $1,000 drives don't jump overboard, every single time a customer comes back in with a broken or missing drive.

So all in all my take on it is that it is a bit unfair to point the finger at Hobie kayaks for being fragile.

We rent Hobie Mirage kayaks in the Wilmington, NC area! I can tell you it is not a very profitable business, but I have rented the TI to people from as far away as Atlanta and Chicago. The couple from Chicago flew down, rented the TI, then returned to Chicago and bought one. I do all the maintenance on the kayaks and it is a pain when renting to the general public. Usually I rent to older folks, sailors, fisherman, and others who tend to have more respect for the equipment, so that helps. The problem is that it is a very niche corner of the rental market, and therefore low volume. Also, with the prices on the Mirage kayaks going up every year, it is difficult to justify the investment for low rental volumes. Especially this year with the new seat adding $300.

So, come on over the east coast where the water is warm and the breeze is blowing and rent the TI and stay on our beautiful NC beaches!

www.masonborowatersports.com

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http://www.masonborowatersports.com
[email protected]

Renting high end Hobies would not be much different from renting jetski's or deck boats, where you sign your life away when you sign the rental agreement against any damage, we went out a few month ago with a couple who rented a powerboat and trashed the prop after running aground , the cost of the new prop was added to the bill. Same would apply on any rental car.
Just my opinion but tourists wouldn't normally know the difference between a Hobie and a regular kayak, and probably would always go for the cheap option.
Bob

We rented a tandem in Lake Havasu, our first mirage drive experience, loved it and ended up buying a Rev11 and a Sport when we got home.

Voyager:
That's exactly what I'm talking about, the way I see things people coming to major tourist ports like Key West on vacation and on cruises, if they were able to rent Hobie Kayaks, SUP's, Waves and Islands for the day at a Hobie surf shop while on vacation from a Hobie owned facility would be a huge boon to Hobie. Once the people go home after enjoying using a Hobie in Key west, what kind of boat are they going to be looking for when they get home (You got it Hobies).
My wife has a store down there and is on all the cruise ships approved vendor and advertising lists (it's very expensive). Naturally I think Hobie would need to be on the approved excursion lists with the cruise lines. Once established the same could be duplicated in other cruise destination ports like Bahamas, Jamaica , Cozumel, St Marteen, etc. with home runs if they can get into CocoCay Bahamas, or Labadee Haiti (both private island resorts)
Obviously I'm a big Hobie fan and love their stuff.
We go on a lot of cruises (3-4 a year some years), and you can't imagine what people spend on excursions and stuff to do at these ports.
Maybe I just think different from everyone else LOL.

Bob
Edit:
All the dealers I know sell other brands and are established as boat or sporting goods companies, I'm talking about a Hobie owned surf type shop at the port, where they sell Hobie products in the store (sunglasses, Tshirts, etc) where they run a rental operation out the back with guided enviro tours, etc. The whole key here is everything is exclusive Hobie products, and they don't sell boats, they would direct people to their local dealers. Actually if Hobie doesn't want to do it on their own, it could be a franchise opportunity..... ( Actually I would get a franchise if available, and the terms were correct). I know all the dealers down in the keys and none of them offer anything remote to what I'm talking about, and wouldn't interfere with their operations. Just ideas