Florida’s boat-show guide · Orlando · Miami · Fort Lauderdale · Palm BeachIndependent · updated each season
Boat Show Florida

Florida’s living boat-show guide — born from the Central Florida Boat Show, keeping pace with every show on the water today

The summer show

The Hot Summer Boat Show.

The August companion to the winter show — a mid-year boat show at the same Orlando convention center.

If the Central Florida Boat Show owned the winter, the Hot Summer Boat Show (“HSBS” in the organizers’ own filenames) owned August. It was the same team’s mid-year show at the same Orange County Convention Center — a second season on the water each year for Central Florida dealers and buyers.

What we know about it

The summer show lives on mostly through the paperwork the organizers posted for exhibitors. Preserved 2008 materials from the show include:

Show schedule“2008 Hot Summer Boat Show Schedule”
Exhibitor contract“2008 HSBS Contract”
Exhibitor kit“2008 HSBS Exhibitors Kit”
Rules“2008 Rules and Regulations”

The following year the winter show’s “2009 CFBS Contract” and “2009 Show Schedule” confirm both shows were run by one organization — the Central Florida Marine Trades Association.

Side by side

By 2011 the two ran together: “Central Florida Boat Show — February 3–6, 2011” and “Hot Summer Boat Show — August 2011,” jointly “the largest and longest running boat shows in Central Florida.” Today the Orlando show carries that two-a-year rhythm forward with winter and late-summer editions — see this season’s dates.

The record for the summer show is thinner than for the winter one — mostly exhibitor documents. If you exhibited at or attended a Hot Summer Boat Show and can add dates or details, please get in touch — we’ll add it.