Affiliate disclosure
This site earns a commission on bookings made through its links. If you book a boat trip or a ferry ticket through a link or a booking panel on helsinkiboattour.com, GetYourGuide pays this site a share of what you paid them. You pay exactly the same as you would booking direct: no surcharge, no markup, no code to enter. That is the whole arrangement, and it does not change what I write.
What is and is not an affiliate link
Every link to GetYourGuide on this site carries a partner identifier, and so does every booking panel and every clickable photograph in the gallery on the homepage. Links from one page here to another page here earn nothing. There are no other outbound links on this site at all, so there is nothing else that could be paid for.
Most of the water here is not something I can be paid for
This is the part worth reading twice, because it is most of what people actually do on the water in Helsinki. The Suomenlinna ferry is public transport. It is run by HSL, it leaves from the eastern side of Market Square in front of the Presidential Palace, it crosses in 15 minutes, it runs all year, and an ordinary AB city ticket valid 90 minutes covers it — the same ticket as the tram. I earn nothing from it and I say so on its own page, which is the most-linked page on this site.
The same goes for a good deal else. JT-Line’s island boats to Vallisaari and the rest are not mine to sell, and I describe them anyway on island hopping and Vallisaari and Lonna. Seurasaari is reached on foot over a wooden bridge and needs no boat at all. And a large part of the best of this city costs nothing, which I would rather tell you than not.
What the commission does not buy
- No operator sees a page before it is published
- No page here has been commissioned, paid for or edited by anybody selling anything
- Nothing is ordered by commission rate, which I do not look at
- The pages on the reviews hub say when a review count is too small to lean on, and the evening cruise review opens with the lowest rating on the site
- Ratings and review counts are the published figures noted at my last reading, not numbers I have chosen
- I tell people on the cruise port page not to attempt the Tallinn day trip on a day in port, which is the opposite of selling the highest-rated booking on the site
Why I use affiliate links at all
Because the alternatives are worse. Advertising would fill these pages with things I have not chosen. A paywall on a visitor guide would be absurd. Sponsorship would put somebody with an interest into the room while I write about their own boat. A commission on a booking you were going to make anyway, from a company I otherwise have no dealings with, is the least compromising arrangement I have found. If it ever stops being that, I will say so on this page.
Bookings, payments and problems
I sell nothing and hold nothing. Your contract is with GetYourGuide and the operator or ferry line, your confirmation comes from them, and changes, cancellations and refunds go through them. If something goes wrong with a booking, their support is the only place that can act on it. Do tell me as well, through the contact page, because it belongs in the review.
No amounts, anywhere
There are no figures on this site for what anything costs, and that is deliberate rather than coy. Amounts move every season, this site is published in several languages, and a stale number is worse than no number. What I can describe is the structure: which crossings are a city ticket, which are a separate product, and which cost nothing at all. That is what it costs and is Helsinki expensive.