Gen Z Adds Millions to the U.S. Economy

Gen Z Adds Millions to the U.S. Economy: A Miami Case Study

Gen Z Is Adding Millions to the U.S. Economy: At 24, This Miami Founder Sold $3.7 Million of Yacht Charters in 2026 Without Owning a Boat

Profile and data feature prepared by Book My Boat about its own founder, from company booking records, public listings and the founder's licensing record. It is source material for editors, not independent journalism; every figure is sourced in the methodology and may be reused with attribution under the license on our data page.

Mariam Revuelta does not own a yacht. At 24, the Cuban-born founder of Book My Boat sells other people's — about 230 of them, docked along the Miami River, in Coconut Grove and on Miami Beach — to birthday groups, bachelorette parties and tourists who want four hours on Biscayne Bay. In 2026, through November 7, her platform booked 2,553 completed charters and $3.73 million in customer spending, every sale made online. The company keeps a margin on each booking; Revuelta estimates that, across all channels, about 40% of what customers pay stays with the business after owners and direct costs are paid.

It is a very Gen Z business: no fleet, no marina, no storefront — a website, a Google Business profile, two online travel agencies, a WhatsApp number and a small sales team. It is also one data point in a shift the national numbers now show. According to payroll provider Gusto's 2026 New Business Formation Report, Gen Z founders started 9% of new U.S. businesses in 2025 — roughly one in eleven of the 5.6 million business applications filed that year — overtaking Baby Boomers (5%) for the first time. They are twice as likely as older founders to run hands-on, in-person businesses in hospitality and the trades. Each of those companies moves money through owners, suppliers and staff; Book My Boat alone routed $3.7 million to boat owners, captains, fuel docks, jet-ski operators and its own payroll in 2026. Yacht charters are about as hands-on and in-person as it gets.

[Image: portrait of Mariam Revuelta at a Miami marina — alt="Mariam Revuelta, 24, founder of Miami yacht-booking platform Book My Boat" — filename: mariam-revuelta-book-my-boat-founder.webp]

Who she is

Revuelta was born in Cuba, where she began medical training before moving to Miami and working in behavioral services. She registered Book My Boat in 2020, at 18. Since 2023 the company has operated at scale as a booking platform for independent owners. In October 2024 she obtained a Florida Yacht & Ship Salesperson licence (DBPR licence 13700, current through June 2028), which lets her broker yacht sales as well as charters.

Her team today is six people: sales manager Serge Sanchez, sales adviser Noelia Sanchez, senior captains Michelle Luvara and Jorge Grimany, and Yared Sanchez, who runs maintenance and fleet inspection with the owners. Revuelta runs direction, marketing, partnerships and the customer experience.

The business, in numbers

Book My Boat's figures come from two records: its supplier account on Viator, the tour marketplace, and the internal ledger of direct bookings made through the website, Google and its sales advisers.

Viator requests, most for Saturdays already sold out citywide. Viator totals include the fuel, crew and marina fees guests pay at the dock.

Calendar 2026 to date (January 1 – November 7): 2,553 charters, $3,726,659. Through Viator alone the company carried 9,286 passengers in twelve months.

2026, month by month:

Viator spending includes dock charges ($150/h fuel, $150/h crew, $150 marina). Direct ledger begins February 28, 2026 . From August the ledger also logged Viator bookings; those 299 rows are excluded here, and earlier months could not be checked the same way. Source: Book My Boat booking records.

What the company keeps

On the direct channel, where every dollar is itemized, customers paid $1,607,331 for 1,238 charters. Boat owners received $1,056,784 (66%). The company's gross margin was $544,924 (34%); after jet-ski costs and 10% commissions to its sales advisers, $445,140 (28%) remained before overhead. Revuelta puts the blended figure across all channels, including Viator payouts and dock fees, at close to 40%. That is her estimate; the 34% is what the ledger shows.

How a 24-year-old sells 2,500 yachts a year without buying one

The model is distribution, not assets. Independent owners — most with one to five boats, typically 40–60 ft motor yachts built between 2000 and 2009 — supply the vessel, captain and fuel. Book My Boat photographs the boat, writes the listing, runs the ads, answers the messages, collects a $300–$500 online deposit and schedules the trip. The customer pays one total; the owner receives about $233 per boat-hour; the platform keeps roughly $110 per hour.

Three decisions explain most of the volume:

1. Selling by the hour, online, with a deposit. 65% of direct customers paid a $300 deposit when booking; the balance is settled at the dock. The result is a 4.7% failure rate, against 80.6% on the free-cancellation marketplace.

2. Being everywhere the search happens. Between March and October 2026 the direct channel (website, Google Business, advisers) completed 1,231 charters and Viator 1,222 — an even split. Revuelta had assumed the direct side was three times larger; the data corrected her.

3. A product people search for by name. The company's pink yachts — Barbie, Princess and others — drew 56.8% of all Viator requests and 24% of direct trips. "Pink yacht Miami" is searched 800 times a month in the U.S., more than any other phrase connected to the brand. The pink boats are not priced higher (median $225 per hour against $240 for comparable boats); they are simply the ones people ask for.

Who the customers are

The ledger is a portrait of how Miami celebrates:

• Birthdays account for 50.5% of Viator customers who stated an occasion; bachelorette parties, 3.1%; families with children, 2.6%.

• Saturday is 35–37% of all trips; Friday to Sunday is 73%.

• Four hours is the standard booking (63% of direct, 75% of Viator). The median group is six people on a boat licensed for 13.

• Jet skis are added to 63% of direct bookings.

• Half of Viator customers book within seven days; a quarter book the day before.

• The customer paid a median of $344 per boat-hour on direct bookings, or $1,377 for the standard four-hour trip — about $106 a head when the boat is full.

What a direct customer pays, by charter length — and the pink boats against the rest:

Direct bookings exclude fuel and dock charges settled with the owner. Source: Book My Boat ledger, Feb 28–Nov 6, 2026.

Source: Book My Boat direct ledger (Feb–Nov 2026) and Viator records.

The constraint: Saturdays run out

The number Revuelta flags first is not revenue. It is 6,587 cancelled Viator requests in a year. In Miami's high season, March to August, every mid-size yacht in the city is sold out on Saturdays one to two weeks ahead — sometimes a month. Viator customers reserve freely, cancel freely until 24 hours before, and most of them wanted a Saturday that was already gone. In July 2026 the company received 1,821 requests and completed 212 trips.

The growth plan follows from the data: sell Fridays and Sundays, which cost the same and are far easier to book; sell add-ons (2.3% of direct trips bought catering, drone video or a bartender at an average $319); and keep signing owners whose boats sit idle on weekdays.

The fleet she doesn't own

Book My Boat lists 432 boats, 233 in the Miami–Fort Lauderdale area and 215 with a public price. The median boat is 52 feet, built in 2009, and rents for $310 an hour before about $220 in crew and fuel — roughly $530 all-in, or $2,120 for four hours. Half the fleet was built between 2000 and 2009 and rents for a median $240 per hour; 18 megayachts over 100 ft rent for $1,990. Sea Ray and Azimut make up 47% of the boats. The Miami River hosts 87 of them at a median $240 per hour; Miami Beach marinas host the newest at $818.

The Gen Z context: millions, one small company at a time

Revuelta's path tracks the national data more than it tracks the yacht industry's. Gusto's 2026 survey of 1,051 founders found Gen Z founders concentrated in hospitality and other hands-on trades, far more likely to run in-person businesses than older generations, and 71% used AI tools to start their companies — this report and the pricing database behind it were built with them. Separate surveys in 2026 put Gen Z's stated intent to start a business at 43%, the highest of any generation (Intuit, via The Lonely Entrepreneur). Miami-Dade, with a record 28 million visitors spending $22 billion in 2024 according to the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, gives that generation an unusually large pool of customers who arrive wanting an experience and leave on Sunday.

What the numbers do not say

Three honest limits. First, the direct-channel ledger begins on February 28, 2026, so the two channels cover different periods and the $3.75 million total mixes twelve months of one with eight of the other; the calendar-2026 figure ($3.73 million) is the cleaner comparison. Second, the 40% retention figure is the founder's estimate across channels; the audited-by-ledger figure is 34% gross on direct bookings. Third, gross customer spending is not company revenue: roughly two-thirds of every dollar is passed to boat owners.

Conclusion

A 24-year-old with a Florida sales licence, a website and a WhatsApp number put 2,553 groups on Biscayne Bay in 2026 and routed $3.73 million through a business that owns no boats. Whether that makes her a case study in Gen Z entrepreneurship or simply a good charter broker, the data is public: the full price database, monthly volumes and cancellation figures are on Book My Boat's data page, free for journalists and researchers to use with attribution.

Methodology and sources

• Viator channel: all 8,175 booking requests in Book My Boat's Viator supplier account with travel dates from November 7, 2025 to November 7, 2026, including cancelled and refunded ones; 1,331 completed and billed. Customer spending on this channel adds the dock charges guests pay on arrival ($150/h fuel, $150/h crew, $150 marina per trip) to the amount Viator settles.

• Direct channel: the company's internal booking ledger, February 28 to November 6, 2026: 1,598 rows, of which 299 were Viator bookings recorded from August onward and removed; 1,299 direct reservations remain, 1,238 completed. Amounts are what customers paid (online deposit plus balance at the dock) as recorded by the company.

• Founder facts: Florida DBPR public licence record 13700 (Yacht & Ship Salesperson, issued October 4, 2024, current through June 19, 2028), checked November 1, 2026; biographical details from the founder.

• Fleet and prices: every listing on bookmyboat.net and its detail page, read November 7, 2026.

• External figures: Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau (2024 visitor industry overview); GetMyBoat, "Top 10 Busiest Boating Cities in Florida 2026"; Gusto, 2026 New Business Formation Report.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Mariam Revuelta?

Mariam Revuelta is the 24-year-old, Cuban-born founder and CEO of Book My Boat, a Miami yacht-booking platform registered in 2020 and operating at scale since 2023. She holds a Florida Yacht & Ship Salesperson licence (DBPR 13700, issued October 2024) and leads a team of six covering sales, captains and fleet maintenance.

How much does Book My Boat make?

In the twelve months to November 7, 2026, customers spent $3,752,902 on 2,569 charters booked through Book My Boat. The company does not keep that amount: about two-thirds goes to boat owners. On direct bookings its gross margin was 34%, and the founder estimates roughly 40% retention across all channels after owners and direct costs.

Does Book My Boat own its yachts?

No. Book My Boat is a booking intermediary. It lists about 230 Miami-area boats owned by independent owners, markets them, takes deposits and schedules trips, and pays the owner for the boat, captain and fuel. The company's revenue is the margin between the customer's payment and the owner's share.

How much is Gen Z contributing to the U.S. economy through new businesses?

Gen Z founders started 9% of new U.S. businesses in 2025 — about one in eleven of the 5.6 million business applications filed that year — more than Baby Boomers (5%) for the first time, according to Gusto's 2026 New Business Formation Report. No official figure isolates their revenue; a single Gen Z-run platform such as Book My Boat moved $3.7 million in customer spending in 2026. Gen Z founders are twice as likely to run in-person businesses such as hospitality, and 71% used AI tools to launch, compared with 42% of Boomers.

How big is the yacht rental market in Miami?

No official count exists. GetMyBoat ranks Miami the busiest boating city in Florida for 2026 with 971 listed vessels and an average hourly rate of $260. A single mid-size platform, Book My Boat, completed 2,569 charters and carried about 9,300 passengers through one channel in a year, and Miami-Dade hosted 28 million visitors in 2024.

Why are pink yachts so popular in Miami?

Because people search for them by name: "pink yacht Miami" has about 800 U.S. searches a month, and 56.8% of Book My Boat's Viator requests asked for a pink boat such as Barbie or Princess. They are not more expensive — median $225 per hour against $240 for similar boats — but their visibility in photos and social media makes them the first choice for birthdays.

What is the busiest time to rent a yacht in Miami?

Saturdays between March and August. Saturday accounts for 35–37% of all charters, and in high season Miami's mid-size yachts sell out one to two weeks ahead. July 2026 was Book My Boat's record month with 476 completed charters across both channels and about $708,000 in customer spending.

License

This license applies to the linked Book My Boat Miami market study.Use of this data. Media professionals, researchers and content creators are welcome to use the data, charts and findings on this page for journalistic, academic and non-commercial purposes. Please credit Book My Boat and link to this page as the source. Charts, tables and CSV files are released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. For interviews, additional data cuts, high-resolution images or the full methodology, contact press@bookmyboat.net.

Suggested citation: Book My Boat (2026). Miami Yacht Rentals: One Year of Real Data, 2025–2026. https://www.bookmyboat.net/blog/miami-yacht-rental-prices-data