About us: an independent guide to La Maddalena boat tours

lamaddalena.boats is an independent guide to boat tours in the La Maddalena Archipelago, written by a small editorial team based in Gallura, the north-eastern corner of Sardinia. We are not the official site of the Parco Nazionale dell’Arcipelago di La Maddalena, we are not a tour operator, and we are not GetYourGuide. We compare, we explain, and we point you to whoever is selling.

What we do

The site answers one practical question: which tour to pick to see the archipelago, from which port, in which month, and what to expect once you are on board. To do that we publish guides to the archipelago boat tour, to departures from Palau and from the other towns along the coast, to the formats on offer (motor ship, catamaran, RIB, private charter), to the islands and the beaches, and to the park rules, plus profiles of the operators and of the booking platforms.

The site is published in English, Italian, French, German, Spanish and Polish. The operator profiles are English-only.

How we work

• We take the tours. Descriptions of the swim stops, the timings and the boats come from real trips, not from listing copy. When an operator changes its formula, we go again.
• We re-check the listings every season. Prices, departure times, inclusions, ratings and review counts for GetYourGuide products are verified on the listing and reported with the date we saw them. If a number cannot be verified, we leave it out.
• We cite the park. Zoning, restrictions, navigation permits and landing rules are attributed to the Parco Nazionale dell’Arcipelago di La Maddalena and its official site. We do not publish ferry or museum timetables, or fees we cannot confirm. We send you to the official source instead.
• We say what does not work. August crowds, cancellations when the mistral blows, the cash landing contribution, long days for small children: if a tour has a weak point, it goes on the page.

How we earn

lamaddalena.boats takes part in the GetYourGuide affiliate programme. When you book a tour through one of our links, the platform pays us a commission. The price you pay is the price on the listing, with nothing added.

That commission is the only thing keeping the site running. Operators do not pay to appear, they cannot pay for a better write-up, and they do not read our texts before publication. When we recommend one tour over another it is because we found it better, not because it pays more. The full range of listings is on GetYourGuide.

What we are not

• Not the official park website: that is lamaddalenapark.it.
• Not an operator: we own no boats and run no trips.
• Not GetYourGuide: we do not handle bookings, payments, date changes or refunds.
• Not a shop. Every purchase happens on the platform or with the operator, on their terms.

Telling us about an error

Prices, timetables and rules change. If you find an out-of-date figure, a broken link, or a statement that does not match what you saw on board, write to info@lamaddalena.boats with the page and the detail. We normally reply within two working days and correct as soon as we have checked. Full details are on the contact page.

Updates

Every page carries the date it was last updated. The tour guides are reviewed in full each spring, before the season starts, and corrected through the summer whenever a listing changes its price, its departure time or what it includes. Operator profiles follow the same cycle. The pages on the islands and the park are revised when the rules change.

Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licences; the credits are on the photo credits page. The conditions for using the site are in our terms of use, and how we handle data is set out in the privacy policy.