One of the biggest problems facing yacht brokers' online marketing strategies today is the time consuming process of uploading their boat details to multiple web portals.

A new initiative called Open Marine intends to solve this problem by creating an industry standard for defining boat and marine equipment data. Key principles of the Initiative are that data should be easily shared between marine web sites, and the transfer of this data should be free of charge to the broker.

Yacht brokers will save time, only uploading their stock information once for it to be published on multiple web sites.

Previous attempts at something similar have been driven by a single company aiming to control the market by setting their proprietary method as the standard and even charging extra for the data transfer.

Open Marine differs in that the data specification will be determined by a group of marine companies. Thus the specification will suit the industry as a whole rather than being what is best for one particular company. Additionally, it is key to Open Marine's philosophy that boat stock data is the intellectual property of the brokers and therefore there should be no fee to transmit this data from one place to another.

The partners behind the Open Marine Initiative are BoatShop24 Limited Limited (www.boatshop24.co.uk / www.boatshop24.com), Forum Software Limited (www.forumboats.com), TheYachtMarket (www.theyachtmarket.com) and Yacht Focus (www.yachtfocus.com). Other marine organisations are welcome to join the Initiative provided that they adhere to the Initiative's key principles.

For more information about the Open Marine Initiative and its key principles, please visit www.openmarine.org.