How this works

What this is

A register of the boats available to charter in Malta and Gozo, in one place, so you can compare what actually exists instead of opening fifteen tabs. Every boat belongs to a Maltese charter operator. We do not own boats and we do not run trips.

How a boat gets on here

An operator asks to be listed, or we ask them. Either way nothing is published until they have given written permission, and we confirm directly with the business that the person who gave it actually speaks for them. That second step is what stops anyone listing a competitor’s fleet.

Where an operator has given us permission, we read the boat pages on their own website on a schedule so their listing stays current. That permission is asked for separately from the permission to be listed — they are the same conversation but not the same thing, and plenty of operators say yes to one and no to the other.

If a boat disappears from an operator’s own site we stop showing it, but we never delete the record. A boat vanishing for a week is a website problem far more often than a sold boat, and deleting would break a page somebody may have bookmarked.

What happens when you enquire

Your enquiry goes by email to the operator of that boat, with your own contact details, and their reply goes to you. We are not in the middle of the conversation and we never see what they quote you.

We are copied so we know it arrived. That copy is kept for 90 days and then your details are deleted — see Privacy.

An enquiry is not a booking. Nothing is reserved until the operator says so.

How we make money

At the moment, we do not. Listing is free while we build the register.

When that changes, operators will pay us to be listed. They will not pay us per booking or per enquiry. We will never take a percentage of what you pay the operator, because the moment we do, we have a reason to push you toward the boats that pay us most — and you would be right to stop trusting the order things appear in.

Does paying change the order?

No, and nothing on this site is paid for placement today.

Boats are ordered by how complete their listing is: a boat with photographs, a price, capacity and a departure marina appears above one with three blank fields. That is not a judgement about the boat, it is a judgement about how much use the page is to you.

If we ever sell promoted placement, it will be labelled as promoted, on the page, where you can see it.

What we do not check

This is the part most directories leave out, so: we do not verify operators’ licences. Transport Malta publishes how to apply for a commercial vessel licence but does not publish a public list of who holds one, so there is nothing we could check against. Rather than imply a check we cannot perform, we do not make the claim at all.

Where an operator gives us their licence number we show it and label it as theirs, not as something we confirmed.

We also do not inspect boats, verify insurance, or check crew qualifications. If any of that matters to you — and for a bareboat week it should — ask the operator directly before you pay anything.

What we do stand behind is narrower and true: every operator here has given written permission to be listed, the price shown is theirs and not marked up, and your enquiry reaches them unaltered.

Reviews

Reviews come from Tried & Tested and are about the operator, not about a particular boat — a company can answer a review, a hull cannot. We show them whether they are good or bad, and we do not write them.

Getting removed

An operator can have their listing taken down the same day they ask, without giving a reason. It is a commitment, not a courtesy — see Contact.

Mistakes

Some of this data is read automatically from operators’ own websites, so some of it will be wrong. If you spot something, tell us and we will fix it. The operator’s own word beats ours every time.