Marinas (United States) — NAICS 713930

An industry primer for public-market and private investors.

1. Overview

A marina is the parking lot of the water: a waterfront business that rents docking and storage space to recreational boat owners and typically sells them the fuel, service, and supplies they need to use their boats [1]. The core product is the slip — a rented berth, either "wet" (in the water) or "dry" (stored on land or racked in a warehouse) — and the core economic fact is that usable waterfront is finite. You cannot manufacture new coastline, and permitting a new marina is slow and expensive, so existing marinas behave like scarce, income-producing real estate with a service business bolted on top.

Investors reach the industry through two layers: the operating business (income from slips, storage, fuel, service, and on-site spending) and the waterfront real estate underneath it (land, submerged-land leases, concessions, and dock infrastructure). The best assets combine a scarce location, durable permits and long lease terms, high occupancy with pricing power, and several ancillary revenue streams.

Public vs. private ways in. There is no pure-play, U.S.-listed marina company to buy. The largest operators are privately held by financial sponsors — Safe Harbor Marinas (owned by Blackstone Infrastructure) and Suntex Marinas (backed by Centerbridge Partners) [13][15]. Public-market investors reach the theme only indirectly: through a boat retailer that also runs marinas (MarineMax), through the private-equity manager that owns the biggest platform (Blackstone), or historically through a real estate investment trust that built and then sold it (Sun Communities) [10][13][14]. Direct ownership of a marina, or a stake in a private fund rolling them up, remains a mostly private-market play.

2. What it is and how it's structured

NAICS (the North American Industry Classification System) code 713930, "Marinas," covers establishments primarily engaged in operating marinas — providing docking and mooring space for pleasure craft, and often also selling fuel and marine supplies and repairing, maintaining, or renting boats [1]. It sits inside the "Amusement, Gambling, and Recreation Industries" group, because a marina is fundamentally a recreation venue. A full-service marina may offer wet slips, dry and rack storage, transient (short-stay) dockage, launching and haul-out, fuel, a ship's store, repair and maintenance, restaurants, retail leases, rentals, memberships, and events — but the primary business must be operating the docking or storage facility.

What the code excludes (and where those activities are counted instead):

• Retailing new or used boats → NAICS 441222, Boat Dealers.
• Building or manufacturing boats → NAICS 336612, Boat Building.
• Renting pleasure boats without operating a marina → NAICS 532284, Recreational Goods Rental.
• Stand-alone boat repair (not part of a marina) → NAICS 811490, Other Personal and Household Goods Repair.
• Commercial cargo docks and ports → NAICS 488310, Port and Harbor Operations, and 488320, Marine Cargo Handling [2].

Many real-world marinas straddle these lines, but statistically each is filed under whichever activity is primary.

Ownership mix. This is one of the most fragmented industries in the U.S. economy, and ownership is unusually varied: family owner-operators, yacht clubs, municipalities, county and state parks, harbor/port districts, federal-reservoir concessions, institutional owners, and private-equity platforms. Government ownership is common because marinas sit on public-trust waters and public land. The supplied federal data do not publish an official public-versus-private split; industry estimates put roughly 70% of marinas in private (mostly family) hands, about 30% under local, county, state, or harbor-district government, and 1–2% as members-only yacht clubs [9]. Treat those shares as an industry estimate, not a Census figure.

3. How big it is

Our federal figures — the ground truth for this primer — count employer businesses in NAICS 713930:

Receipts are from 2022 while employment and payroll are from 2023, so these are not a single-year income statement.

The undercount caveat — it matters here. These counts understate the physical marina world in two ways. First, County Business Patterns covers only employer establishments with paid employees and an employer identification number; it excludes self-employed and nonemployer operations, and the Economic Census generally excludes government-operated facilities [4][5]. The roughly 30% of marinas that are municipally or state owned therefore land in public budgets, not this industry code [9]. Second, thousands of very small, owner-run docks have no payroll and fall outside the count. That is why tallies of all U.S. marinas run far higher — commonly cited industry figures range from roughly 9,300 to 10,500 facilities [8] — versus the 3,739 employer establishments above, and broader market-size estimates that fold in these operators put annual revenue closer to $6–7.6 billion [7]. Read the federal numbers as the taxable private-employer core, not the whole harbor.

Concentration is remarkably low. The four largest firms hold just 6.9% of industry revenue (CR4), the top eight 10.3% (CR8), the top 20 15.8% (CR20), and the top 50 23.1% (CR50); the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) — a standard concentration measure running from near 0 (perfectly fragmented) to 10,000 (a monopoly) — is only 20 [3]. For scale, U.S. antitrust regulators consider a market "unconcentrated" below 1,500. Marinas are about as fragmented as any industry gets, which is precisely why roll-up investors see runway.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) size standard for the industry is $11 million in average annual receipts — below that, a marina counts as a small business [6]. The vast majority of the 3,438 firms clear that bar easily.

4. Investable universe

There is no listed pure-play. The table shows the practical public-market proxies and how much marina exposure each carries; tickers and market data belong here and in Section 10, not in the industry economics above.

The cleanest listed operating exposure is MarineMax, but it remains a diversified company — its total revenue, debt, and share price should not be read as a pure gauge of marina economics.

Major private owners and platforms — where most of the industry actually sits:

• Safe Harbor Marinas — the largest operator in the Western Hemisphere, roughly 138 marinas (plus shipyards) across the U.S. and Puerto Rico; owned by Blackstone Infrastructure [13].
• Suntex Marinas — 100+ marinas nationwide (34 in Florida) focused on full-service resort-style properties with fuel, dining, and lodging; a joint venture backed by Centerbridge Partners, and among the most active acquirers. Its 2025–26 merger with Windward Marina Group added 13 locations and 3,000+ slips [15].
• Southern Marinas — 16 marinas across eight states with more than 6,700 slips; recapitalized by infrastructure investor Stonepeak in 2026 (previously backed by KSL Capital Partners) [16].
• Westrec Companies and other established independents, family offices, and municipal/harbor-district operators, alongside thousands of small independent marinas.

For most investors, the cleanest direct exposure is private: buying a marina outright, or committing to a private-equity, infrastructure, or family-office vehicle that assembles them.

5. How the money works

A marina is a small commercial ecosystem, and owners stack several revenue lines on top of scarce waterfront capacity [17]:

• Slip and storage rental — the anchor. Wet slips and dry/rack storage are billed by boat length as annual, seasonal, monthly, or transient (nightly) dockage. Pricing rises with slip length, water depth, utilities, and location. Dry-stack racks (multi-story warehouses holding 300–500 boats on the footprint of 50–80 wet slips) let an operator multiply slip income without adding water. Annual slip and storage contracts are recognized over the contract term, giving the business recurring, contracted revenue [11][17].
• Fuel. Gas and diesel typically run 10–20% gross margin — thin, but sticky traffic that pulls boaters in [17].
• Service, repair, and the ship's store. Boatyard labor, haul-outs, winterization, parts, and retail are higher-margin and relatively counter-cyclical — owners maintain boats even when they aren't buying new ones.
• Food, beverage, retail leases, events, and (at resort marinas) lodging.

The cost base is real-asset heavy: waterfront rent or concession payments, payroll, utilities, dock and seawall maintenance, periodic dredging, insurance, property taxes, environmental compliance, technology, and capital spending. Those fixed site costs create operating leverage when occupancy and pricing rise, but make storms, closures, and major infrastructure repairs expensive.

The metrics that matter are industry-specific: occupancy and utilization (premium marinas often run above 90% with waitlists), revenue per occupied slip or linear foot, renewal/churn and waiting-list depth, transient occupancy and average daily dockage, fuel volume and gross profit, the share of income from ancillary services (the diversifier that smooths fuel and weather swings), maintenance capital per slip, and cash-flow measures — EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) for operating companies and NOI (net operating income) for the real estate. Seasonality is geographic: in northern markets wet-slip demand peaks in warm months while dry storage peaks in winter [10].

Valuation reflects the scarcity story. Industry brokers report that high-quality coastal marinas with 90%+ occupancy and strong service revenue trade around 11–14x EBITDA, a premium to comparable service businesses [18]. The Safe Harbor sale was struck at roughly 21x the target's estimated FFO (funds from operations, a REIT cash-earnings measure) — an institutional, portfolio-scale premium [13][14]. Because building a new marina is so hard, replacement cost often sets a floor under value, especially for properties with permitted dockage and fuel infrastructure. These are reported deal-market observations, not a promise of returns; a marina should never be valued on gross receipts alone.

6. Demand drivers

• The installed boat base. Every boat needs somewhere to live, and slips — not boats — are the constraint. The U.S. recorded about 11.5 million registered recreational vessels in 2023 (11,546,512), down slightly from 11.77 million in 2022 [20]; industry estimates of the total in-use fleet (including unregistered craft) run closer to 16 million [19].
• Discretionary spending and the boating cycle. Total U.S. recreational-marine retail spending was about $55.6 billion in 2024, down ~2.6% as higher rates cooled new-boat unit sales [19]. New powerboat unit sales fell an estimated 9–12% in 2024, to roughly 230,000–240,000 units [22] — yet boat usage, and therefore slip, storage, and service demand, held up better than sales. As a broad-economy reference, NMMA put recreational boating's total U.S. economic impact at $230 billion in 2023 (up 36% from 2018) — a whole-ecosystem figure, not NAICS 713930 marina receipts [21].
• Coastal and Sun Belt migration. Population and wealth are shifting toward coastal and lake markets; Florida is the largest boating state with roughly a million registered vessels, concentrating demand where slip supply is tightest [20].
• Constrained supply. Limited developable waterfront, environmental constraints, and long permitting keep new slips scarce — a demand tailwind for incumbents.
• New access models. Boat clubs and peer-to-peer sharing (e.g., Brunswick's Freedom Boat Club) put more people on the water without boat ownership, supporting transient and service demand [12].
• Interest rates and wealth effects. Boats and slips are discretionary; demand tracks disposable income, home equity, and financing costs.

NMMA is the National Marine Manufacturers Association, the industry's trade body.

7. Regulation

Marinas are lightly regulated as businesses but heavily regulated as waterfront structures. The net effect: compliance raises operating costs modestly but protects incumbents enormously by making new marinas very hard to build.

• Federal construction permits. Building or expanding docks, piers, seawalls, ramps, floats, or dredging in navigable water requires approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) under Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 and Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (CWA), which governs dredge-and-fill [23]. These reviews are the single biggest barrier to new supply.
• Environmental compliance. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state agencies regulate fueling, spill prevention, boat maintenance, sewage, waste handling, and habitat protection [24]. The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) stormwater program can apply where vessel maintenance or equipment cleaning occurs [26]. The Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure (SPCC) rule generally applies once a facility has more than 1,320 gallons of aboveground oil-storage capacity (or 42,000 gallons buried) and could discharge into navigable waters [25]. Vessel-sewage rules, no-discharge zones, pumpout requirements, and the Clean Boating Act add further obligations [28].
• Clean Marina Program. This voluntary program certifies operators on best-management practices; in some states, certified marinas earn extended (5–25 year) submerged-land leases, which improves their ability to borrow against the asset [24].
• Submerged-land / riparian rights. Because the seabed is typically public-trust land, marinas usually operate under state sovereignty submerged-land leases rather than owning the water bottom outright — a defining feature of the asset and a recurring diligence item.
• Accessibility. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards for recreational boating facilities require accessible routes and slips, generally specifying 60 inches of clear pier space at accessible slips, subject to exceptions [27].
• Local zoning and coastal-zone management add another, often politically sensitive, layer.

A permit-secured, dredged, fueled marina is hard to replicate — but an expired concession, a failed dredging approval, or an environmental violation can impair the asset's value.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

For decades this was a fragmented, family-run business with no national brands. That is changing. Since the late 2010s, well-capitalized platforms — Safe Harbor and Suntex above all — have been acquiring independents to build national networks, chasing scale in insurance, technology, purchasing, reservations, and boater loyalty across locations. Landmark moves include Sun Communities building Safe Harbor into the largest operator before selling it to Blackstone for $5.65 billion in 2025 [13][14], Suntex's merger with Windward Marina Group [15], and infrastructure investor Stonepeak's 2026 recapitalization of Southern Marinas [16].

Consolidation creates value through better purchasing and technology, centralized accounting/marketing/reservations, cross-selling service and fuel, professionalized capital spending on docks and seawalls, and buying under-managed sites. But it is still early: even after all this dealmaking, no single company holds more than about 5% of the U.S. market, consistent with the federal four-firm share of 6.9% [3]. The runway is long — the roll-up thesis — but the best assets are increasingly spoken for and priced accordingly. Competition is intensely local (a marina competes with the handful of harbors a boater can realistically reach), which gives well-located incumbents durable pricing power. The natural limit on consolidation is that each site has distinct permits, lease terms, water depth, environmental conditions, local politics, labor needs, and customer relationships: a platform can standardize functions, but not the waterfront itself.

9. Risks

• Weather and climate. Hurricanes, storm surge, floods, freezes, and drought can destroy docks, seawalls, buildings, and boats; insurance costs are rising and, in some coastal markets, coverage is getting harder to obtain. Sea-level rise is a long-horizon question for waterfront infrastructure.
• Cyclicality. Marinas are discretionary-spend businesses tied to the boating cycle, interest rates, and consumer confidence; downturns pressure new-boat sales, fuel volume, and service — though storage and annual slips are the most resilient lines. The industry is not defensive in the way a regulated utility is.
• Capital intensity. Dredging, dock and rack replacement, seawalls, and electrical/storm-hardening are large, lumpy costs; deferred maintenance is a common hidden liability.
• Valuation and leverage. Institutional buying has pushed entry multiples up; higher rates raise the cost of the leverage roll-ups depend on, and seasonal cash flow is risky when debt maturities coincide with major capital projects [18].
• Regulatory and lease risk. Dependence on state submerged-land leases and concessions means renewal terms, rent resets, and environmental mandates sit partly outside the owner's control; permit delays, non-renewal, or zoning changes can strand an investment.
• Environmental liability. Fuel spills, stormwater violations, contaminated sediments, hazardous-waste and sewage problems can create cleanup obligations that impair value.
• Labor. Shortages of mechanics, dock staff, and managers can cap service revenue.
• Public-proxy risk. The listed names (MarineMax, Brunswick, OneWater) carry heavy boat-retail and manufacturing exposure, so an equity investor buying them "for marinas" is really buying the broader, more cyclical boating cycle — and a marina asset can perform well while the parent's other segments do not.

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public routes. The purest listed operating proxy is MarineMax (NYSE: HZO), where marinas, IGY, and superyacht services are the higher-margin, faster-growing part of a business still dominated by boat retail [10]. OneWater (NASDAQ: ONEW) adds marine-retail and service with some storage exposure; Brunswick (NYSE: BC) offers engines, boats, and boat-club access; Blackstone (NYSE: BX) gives indirect exposure to Safe Harbor inside a giant alternative-asset manager; Sun Communities (NYSE: SUI) is instructive as the seller that crystallized the sector's value but has now exited. In short, the public market offers exposure to the theme and to the boats, not a clean marina pure-play. Useful public-company diligence: separately disclosed marina/storage revenue, same-location slip and storage growth, occupancy/pricing/renewal trends, segment EBITDA and capex, debt maturities and interest cost, acquisition prices and integration results, and exposure to weather-prone markets.

Private routes. This is where the real ownership sits: buying an individual marina (a real-estate-plus-operating business), a regional roll-up, an operating lease or management contract, waterfront real estate with a separate operator, preferred equity or private credit, or a private-equity/infrastructure fund. The critical underwriting questions are whether you control the waterfront, how long the lease or concession lasts and whether permits are transferable, how much expansion capacity remains, and whether maintenance capital has been deferred. Do not value on gross receipts: normalize occupancy, owner compensation, fuel margins, service profitability, insurance, property taxes, lease payments, recurring capex, and storm losses. For real estate, NOI and debt-service coverage often matter more than corporate EBITDA; for an operating company, customer retention, service backlog, ancillary spending, and acquisition discipline are central.

Outlook. The evidence supports a constructive but selective view. The bull case rests on durable slip scarcity, a large installed fleet (~11.5M registered vessels), Sun Belt migration, and a long consolidation runway from a still-fragmented base [3][19][20]. The tempering factors are a softer new-boat sales cycle, elevated interest rates that weigh on leveraged buyers, rising insurance and climate exposure on the coasts, and richly priced assets. On balance, the industry's defining feature — you can't build more waterfront — is likely to keep a floor under values even as the boating cycle ebbs and flows. Returns will hinge on buying the right waterfront rights at the right price, not simply assembling the largest marina count; the open question is price, not scarcity.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau. "713930 Marinas: 2022 NAICS Definition." https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=713930&year=2022
2. U.S. Census Bureau. "488310 Port and Harbor Operations: 2022 NAICS Definition." https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=488310&year=2022
3. U.S. Census Bureau. "Concentration of Largest Firms for the U.S.: 2022" (Economic Census; NAICS 713930 — receipts, firms, CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50, HHI). https://data.census.gov/table/ECNSIZE2022.EC2200SIZECONCEN?codeset=naics~713930
4. U.S. Census Bureau. "County Business Patterns: 2023" (NAICS 713930 — establishments, employees, payroll, first-quarter payroll). https://data.census.gov/table/CBP2023.CB2300CBP?codeset=naics~713930
5. U.S. Census Bureau. "County Business Patterns Methodology." https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/technical-documentation/methodology.html
6. U.S. Small Business Administration. "Table of Size Standards" (NAICS 713930 = $11.0M). 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
7. IBISWorld. "Marinas in the US — Market Size (2005–2031)." 2024. https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/market-size/marinas/1654/
8. MarinaSeeker / Simply Marinas. "Every Marina in America" and "The Marina Market in 2025" (facility-count estimates ~9,300–10,500). 2025. https://www.marinaseeker.com/; https://www.simplymarinas.com/the-marina-market-in-2025/
9. Sun Powered Yachts. "Who are the top 5 marina operators in the US?" (industry ownership-mix estimate: ~70% private, ~30% government, 1–2% yacht clubs). 2025. https://www.sunpoweredyachts.com/single-post/who-are-the-top-5-marina-operators-in-the-us
10. MarineMax, Inc. "2025 Annual Report on Form 10-K" (65+ marina/storage locations, IGY Marinas, seasonality, revenue mix). 2025. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001057060&type=10-K
11. OneWater Marine Inc. "2025 Annual Report on Form 10-K" (~95 retail locations; storage/marina revenue recognition). 2025. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001772921&type=10-K
12. Brunswick Corporation. "2025 Annual Report on Form 10-K" (Freedom Boat Club ~440 locations, 60,000+ memberships). 2026. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000014930&type=10-K
13. Blackstone. "Blackstone Infrastructure to Acquire Safe Harbor Marinas in $5.65B Transaction" (and completion release; ~138 marinas). 2025. https://www.blackstone.com/news/press/blackstone-infrastructure-to-acquire-safe-harbor-marinas-in-5-65b-transaction/
14. Sun Communities, Inc. "Sun Communities Completes Sale of Safe Harbor Marinas to Blackstone Infrastructure for $5.65 Billion." April 2025. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/04/30/3071812/0/en/Sun-Communities-Inc-Completes-Sale-of-Safe-Harbor-Marinas-to-Blackstone-Infrastructure.html
15. Suntex Marinas. "Suntex and Windward Marina Group Announce Merger of Marina Portfolios" (100+ marinas, 34 in Florida; +13 locations, 3,000+ slips). 2025–2026. https://suntex.com/press-releases/suntex-and-windward-marina-group-announce-merger-of-marina-portfolios/
16. Stonepeak. "Southern Marinas Announces Recapitalization by Stonepeak" (16 marinas, eight states, 6,700+ slips). 2026. https://stonepeak.com/news/southern-marinas-announces-recapitalization-by-stonepeak
17. SVN Marinas. "Marina Revenue Streams Explained." 2025. https://svnmarinas.com/marina-revenue-streams/
18. Seaport Real Estate Group. "What Makes a Marina a Strong Commercial Investment in 2026?" (broker-reported EBITDA multiples, per-slip revenue, replacement-cost floor). 2026. https://www.seaportre.com/blog/marina-commercial-investment-2026.html
19. National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA). "2024 U.S. Recreational Boating Statistical Abstract" ($55.6B retail spending; in-use fleet). 2025. https://www.nmma.org/statistics/publications/statistical-abstract
20. U.S. Coast Guard. "2023 Recreational Boating Statistics" (11,546,512 registered vessels in 2023; 11,770,383 in 2022). 2024. https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/2023-recreational-boating-statistics
21. NMMA. "Recreational Boating's Economic Impact Soars to $230 Billion" (2023 total economic impact). 2023. https://www.nmma.org/statistics/article/24324
22. NMMA. "Innovation Driving U.S. Boat Sales Demand …" (2024 new powerboat unit sales down ~9–12%). 2025. https://www.nmma.org/press/article/24937
23. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. "Regulatory Program and Permits" (Section 10 Rivers and Harbors Act; Section 404 Clean Water Act). 2026. https://www.usace.army.mil/Missions/Civil-Works/Regulatory-Program-and-Permits/
24. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "Marinas and Boating: National Management Measures" and Clean Marina Program. 2026. https://www.epa.gov/nps/marinas-and-boating-national-management-measures
25. U.S. EPA. "Who Is Regulated by the SPCC Rule?" (1,320-gal aboveground / 42,000-gal buried thresholds). 2026. https://www.epa.gov/oil-spills-prevention-and-preparedness-regulations/who-regulated-spcc-rule
26. U.S. EPA. "Industrial Stormwater: Sector Q — Water Transportation" (NPDES). 2026. https://www3.epa.gov/npdes/pubs/sector_q_watertransportation.pdf
27. U.S. Access Board. "Chapter 10: Recreational Boating Facilities" (ADA accessible-slip standards). 2026. https://www.access-board.gov/ada/guides/chapter-10-boating-facilities/
28. U.S. EPA. "About the Clean Boating Act." 2026. https://www.epa.gov/vessels-marinas-and-ports/about-clean-boating-act-cba