Beth is the founder of SFB Boat Hire, based in the canal-lined coastal town of St Francis Bay, South Africa. Living in a popular tourist destination known for its inland waterways, she saw a clear opportunity. Visitors arrived eager to explore the canals and river but without their own boats. So in October 2025, she launched a rental business to give them access to the water.
SFB Boat Hire offers a tiered fleet of boats for water skiing, relaxed canal cruises, and sundowner trips. Because South African regulations require a skipper’s license for boats with motors over 15HP, Beth structured her fleet to serve both licensed and unlicensed guests.
Visitors without a license can rent boats under 15HP and receive a full handover and quick training from one of the company’s skippers. The team also handles launching and retrieving, so customers simply arrive and enjoy their time on the water. Beth knew she needed a rental software and boat rental website that could handle bookings both online and manually.
After testing several systems that felt more suited to retail products or guided tours, she chose Booqable for its flexibility and ability to manage rotating rental stock. With Booqable’s pricing structures, fixed rental periods, and padding time features, she was able to shape the booking process around how her boats actually operate.
Setting a minimum one-day rental period with pricing structures
One of the early challenges Beth faced while testing other systems was enforcing a minimum one day rental. Many platforms allowed customers to select short or uneven time slots that did not match how SFB Boat Hire runs. For a boat rental business that delivers, launches, retrieves, and cleans every vessel, anything less than a structured rental period created confusion and extra admin.
Here’s how it works with Booqable. Beth set up clear pricing structures with a full day minimum and connected those to fixed rental periods. That automatically restricts the online date picker on her boat rental website, so customers cannot book less than one day. As Beth puts it, “We needed to make sure every booking was at least a full day. The pricing structures made it easy to enforce that without us having to double-check every reservation.”
This setup achieves three important things for her business:
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Ensures every booking meets the minimum one day charge
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Aligns online bookings with how boats are delivered and collected
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Keeps pricing consistent across different boat tiers and deposits
By controlling rental periods directly within the boat rental software, Beth avoids back-and-forth emails about incorrect booking times. It solved her original problem of mismatched bookings and allows her small team of four to focus on customers instead of fixing calendar issues.
Managing turnarounds with automated padding time
Another major concern for SFB Boat Hire was turnaround time between rentals. Boats return dirty, sometimes sandy, and occasionally in need of minor checks or refuelling. Without built-in buffer time, the risk of overlapping bookings or rushed cleaning increases.
Booqable’s padding time feature allows Beth to automatically block out buffer hours before and after each rental. That means when one booking ends, the system prevents another from starting immediately. As Beth explains, “The buffer time makes sure we’re not rushing between clients. It gives us breathing room to clean and prepare properly.”
This feature helps the team:
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Allow enough time for cleaning and mechanical checks
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Avoid double bookings during busy holiday periods
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Maintain a high standard of presentation and safety
Instead of manually blocking off time on a calendar, the padding is built directly into each booking rule. That protects the team during peak tourist seasons when bookings come in quickly through their boat rental website. It also means customers consistently receive boats that are ready to go, not rushed out the door.
Building for long term growth
Today, SFB Boat Hire operates with a team of four managing admin, deliveries, maintenance, and customer relations. All bookings come through digital channels, and Booqable handles invoices, rental contracts, and availability in one place.
Within just two and a half months of launching, the business has exceeded beyond their revenue goals. “Booqable is efficient, and that’s why we love it,” Beth says. With the right systems in place, SFB Boat Hire is well positioned to grow its fleet and continue leading boat rentals in the region.
