Why should I book my Kimberley Cruise with you?

The closure of international borders in March 2020  meant that 100s of Australian travel agents who previously spurned domestic travel suddenly “pivoted” (to use one of 2020’s most overused word) to booking domestic holidays such as Kimberley cruises. But you cannot become an expert in Kimberley cruising overnight.

Myself and my team have been specialising in Kimberley cruising for over fifteen years. I myself have cruised the Kimberley coast with four different vessels; each one with its own distinctive style.

My colleague, Karen, has cruised the Kimberley coast with three different ships. In fact everyone in our office has cruised the Kimberley at least once. We have all drank a beer at Matsos Brewery in Broome, taken a fast boat through the Horizontal Waterfalls, flown in a helicopter (with no doors!) over Mitchell Falls, dipped our heads under King Cascade, swam in Kimberley waterholes, climbed to the top of King George Falls…….you get the idea; we’ve done this ourselves.

It is very important to me and my team that we match our customers with the right vessel for them. I say it all the time…there is no ‘one size fits all’ options in the Kimberley. We don’t just tell you about what is right about each vessel but sometimes what is perhaps not right (for you) about a vessel. We tell you what we think – it is not uncommon for one of us to talk someone out of booking a particular vessel because we do not believe it was suitable.

And we are fussy about which ships we offer as well. We do not work with all Kimberley cruise vessels.

I have had the good fortune to take four cruises along the Kimberley coast with four different vessels. But I only feature three of these vessels on my website. The fourth vessel was just not up to scratch quite frankly and I am not prepared to promote it. This decision did cause quite a lot of unhappiness from the vessel’s owner and a certain degree of embarrassment for me – after all I had been offered the berth for free at the last minute. But my experiences with that vessel made it impossible for me to confidently offer it to my clients.

If you want a little more detail about the cruise you’ll find the article here (and no, I am not going to say the name of the vessel) but basically the whole experience was a little too ’she’ll be right mate’ for my comfort. Most Kimberley cruises have a certain degree of Australian informality about them but there is a line between informality and professionalism and in this instance there was not much awareness of where that line was located.