At Filovent, we have always made it a point of honor to provide the best possible service to our customers. This guiding principle explains our concern, as the magazines Yacht and Vela have recently reported cases of customers of the Boataround platform whose cruise was cancelled at the last minute.
In this article, I will explain factually and objectively how the recent revelations regarding the situation of the Boataround platform raise questions about its financial health and could have consequences for your next cruise.
This article is based on public information available as of 26/11/2025 and does not constitute legal advice.
Questionable practices
So where does the problem start? Two main types of controversial practices that could be used by Boataround have been highlighted, notably by the Italian newspaper Vela: ‘price dumping’ and ‘bait and switch’.
"Price dumping"
“Price dumping” is an aggressive commercial practice that consists in selling goods or services on a foreign market at a price far lower than that of local companies. In concrete terms, for Boataround, a Slovak company, this would mean offering to rent you a boat at a much lower price than its French, German or Italian counterparts on their respective markets.
I must be very clear from the outset: this is not an illegal practice! Indeed, “price dumping”, although predatory, is allowed. However, such a pricing strategy represents a threat to the boat rental market, as it often aims at the creation of a monopoly, to the detriment of competitors’ financial health and of commercial ethics.
Our sales team often reports aggressive discounts from Boataround that they simply cannot match. “Today, Boataround offers the best prices on the market, but what I often tell my clients is that booking with them is a bit like playing the lottery. There is a one-in-four chance that your boat won’t be there when you arrive.” explains Franklin, our advisor specialized in the Caribbean. For Manon, our head of concierge & customer relations, this pricing policy has major consequences: “If we aligned ourselves with Boataround’s prices, we would no longer be able to offer a concierge service to our clients, and that is something we often have to explain to them”.
The very low prices that result from these discounts suggest several scenarios: if Boataround can afford to slash prices so much, it is probably because it creates this discount by sacrificing a significant share of its own commissions. The result is less money to invest or to ensure the quality of service provided to customers.
"Bait and switch"
When we talk about “bait and switch”, we refer to situations where someone pays for a product or service but ends up receiving a different product or service from the one they were interested in. Applied to our case, some people who dealt with Boataround arrived at the marina on the day of departure and found a different boat, generally of lower quality.
Here, however, the practice is clearly prohibited and can be likened to deception, as it misleads customers as to the nature of the product they are renting or buying.
And this technique is all the more serious when we understand the levers it relies on! A company guilty of “bait and switch” is counting on the fact that its customer, having spent time finding the right product, will end up accepting to pay more than the product actually costs.
A company that may be facing financial difficulties
At the root of the problem: accounts in the red
It is true that Boataround has been pursuing an aggressive pricing policy for several years now. We therefore wanted to understand why the prices offered by the company have continued to fall year after year. This research led us to a hypothesis: the financial difficulties that the company seems to be experiencing could be one of the factors explaining this situation.
To document that Boataround is in a difficult financial situation, we investigated and found the Boataround income statement in the official Slovak corporate accounts database, the equivalent of societe.com in Slovakia (registeruz.sk), where their financial statements are available. The finding is quite clear: in 2023, Boataround posted a net loss of just over €1,000,000. And unfortunately, the same finding (a negative result) applies to 2022, 2021, and so on back to 2016…
The most logical explanation we could think of is that Boataround is trying to capture as many offers as possible with very low prices in order to reverse this financial trend. But this strategy could be risky: to cut prices, the company must shave off its margins, even to the point of no longer generating any profit.
When we discovered these income statements, we tried to draw a connection with recent cases of Boataround customers who found out, on the day of departure and on site, that the boat they had paid for had not been booked by Boataround. The reason for these last-minute cancellations may be that Boataround no longer has the funds to pay the charter companies. If this explanation were to be confirmed, it would be extremely worrying. It should nevertheless be emphasised that this hypothesis must be treated with caution, and that a negative result does not necessarily mean that the company is bankrupt.
A déjà vu: the Zizoo case
If this situation sounds familiar, it is because there is a precedent. In 2024, it was the boat charter company Zizoo, based in Vienna and Berlin, that was under heavy fire from its customers’ criticism. The alleged facts resemble those currently levelled at Boataround.
Many Zizoo customers paid the company to book a week on a boat, but when they arrived at the departure base, the third-party charter company told them that Zizoo had never paid the amount required for the boat to be made available. Investigations at the time revealed that the money paid by customers had been used for other purposes.
Another technique apparently used by Zizoo was to let customers travel to their departure base and then inform them at the last minute that the company had not received the deposit needed to reserve the boat. The next step was to ask customers to pay again. Not wanting to have booked flights and travelled for nothing, they generally accepted Zizoo’s terms and were reluctant to embark on lengthy and costly legal proceedings to get their money back.
Weakened by its financial problems, Zizoo saw this story end with its bankruptcy and liquidation, followed by its acquisition by a competing charter company.
Who is to blame?
Examining the Boataround case in light of what we learned from the Zizoo case raises an important question: how can such a situation repeat itself with so many similarities? Mindlessly blaming Boataround is not our goal, so we tried to understand.
A regulatory grey area
These cases are all the more surprising because they occur within the regulatory framework of the European Union (EU). Not only is Boataround subject to Slovak law, but since Slovakia has been a member of the EU since 2004, the company must also comply with European law. And the latter is particularly dense when it comes to the tourism sector!
The main obligations that tourism professionals must comply with are laid down in Directive (EU) 2015/2302 on package travel and linked travel arrangements. Among these obligations, a key pillar is the financial guarantee, which is supposed to cover 100% of the funds paid by customers. The aim is straightforward: in the event of bankruptcy or insolvency, the financial guarantee to which the company has subscribed steps in to reimburse customers. It is also worth noting that travel organisers are subject to an obligation to inform customers, in particular as regards clearly setting out who is responsible if the contract is performed poorly. In any event, EU rules require full financial protection for customers in the event of a company’s bankruptcy.
So where might the problem lie? One hypothesis is that Boataround operates in a legal grey area that could explain the refund difficulties encountered by some customers. At Filovent, as at our colleagues at Globe Sailor, it is our status as a travel agency, registered with the French association responsible for the travel agencies register, that enables us to benefit from a guarantee fund that ensures our customers are reimbursed in the event of bankruptcy. But after our research on Boataround, we found no trace of a travel agency licence, even in Slovakia. It should be noted that this lack of results does not mean that Boataround does not have such status, but the absence of evidence creates a legitimate doubt. Only the competent authority would be able to officially confirm Boataround’s status.
For some of our other counterparts, such as Samboat and Click&Boat, the key status is that of a peer-to-peer rental platform. As such, these two companies have an escrow account, i.e. a bank account held by a neutral third party (a notary or a bank), into which customers’ transactions are paid. The advantage is that, if the contractual clauses are not fulfilled, the neutral third party can reimburse the money to the injured parties, thereby ensuring the security of both customers and companies. Yet again, none of our research has allowed us to conclude that Boataround uses an escrow account. Here too, it is important to emphasise that our investigation does not allow us to state that Boataround does not have such an account.
What responsibility do investment funds bear?
Another question remains unanswered: if Boataround has posted negative results since 2016, how has the company managed to grow until 2025? Some research helped us understand that it was investment funds that provided financial backing to the company. €1.15 million in 2017 via the crowdfunding platform Crowdberry, €1.2 million in a Series C round in 2021, €4.2 million in 2023 from multiple investors (Crowdberry, Miton and CB Investment Management), and a further €5.5 million in 2024: since its creation, the company has multiplied its fundraising rounds.
Of course, risk is a core component of finance, but there is a legitimate question as to the relevance of financing a company that appears to be suffering from profitability issues. In law, there is a fundamental obligation that investors must comply with: the principle of due diligence. In short, due diligence means carrying out a thorough and rigorous analysis of the financial and legal situation, the business model, the management team and the market of the company in which one wishes to invest. It is not, of course, a guarantee of a safe investment, but it is essential.
One may wonder how this duty of due diligence was applied. Numerous warning signs were probably ignored by investors, including Boataround’s cumulative net losses, the viability of a business model largely based on low prices in a sector such as boat rental, Zizoo’s bankruptcy, and the monitoring of the burn rate, an indicator of the speed at which a company uses up its cash resources.
However, we must remain fair in our analysis. Investing in a company inherently involves taking risks. Many elements can also help put our assessment into perspective: Boataround’s sustained growth, the implementation of illegal practices only after the various funding rounds, or the trust placed in the expertise of Boataround’s founders, Jana Escher and Pavel Pribis, both former employees of Booking.com, may all have lowered investors’ vigilance. What we want to highlight is the possible negligence on the part of these investment funds.
What impact could this have on your cruise?
What happened to Zizoo’s customers has now become reality for some Boataround customers. European holidaymakers are beginning to complain about troublesome situations stemming from the decisions taken by the company. At a time when Boataround still has a positive rating on Trustpilot (4.5/5), these testimonies are crucial to avoid finding yourself in a similar situation.
Marcus Neumüller
One of the customers who has recently spoken out is German doctor Marcus Neumüller, a Boataround customer. He wanted to go to Greece in mid-October and jumped at an offer proposed by Boataround: a 40-foot Beneteau, paddle included, for €2,600.
But when one of his companions arrived in Athens a day early, the Greek charter company, Alimos, warned that the boat would not be made available to Mr Neumüller and his friends because Boataround had never made the final payment of €1,200, a practice known and condemned by the charter company. The doctor hastened to call and put pressure on the Slovak company, which eventually gave in and paid the outstanding amount. Marcus Neumüller was able to leave on his Beneteau, but found the experience particularly outrageous: “No one needs this kind of stress”, he told journalists from the German magazine Yacht.
Nico Gast
Mr Neumüller is not the only customer to have reported similar events. The magazine Vela recounts the story of Nico Gast, a German Boataround customer. Mr Gast was planning to sail on a 46-foot yacht he had selected and eventually booked through Boataround. A few months before departure, he was informed that the boat would no longer be available, but that he would be offered a replacement vessel of the same size from a competing brand. When he arrived at the marina on the day of departure, the boat owner informed him that Boataround’s final payment had never arrived, that the contract had been cancelled and the boat rented to other holidaymakers.
To make up for this, Boataround offered Mr Gast a 40-foot boat instead of the agreed 46-footer, available from the following day. None of the additional travel costs, the lost day of sailing or the price difference between the two boats would apparently have been refunded spontaneously by Boataround.
Florian Koschel
Another case is that of Florian Koschel, a German lawyer who learned one day before his departure that his cruise in Greece had been cancelled due to an error by the boat owner. After calling the Greek charter company, Mr Koschel realised that the problem was that Boataround had not made the final payment. Boataround then offered him an alternative, but in a different part of Greece and at a much higher price.
Growing discontent on social media
These concrete cases, reported in the press, now shed light on a growing wave of discontent on social media and review sites. In this respect, the magazine Yacht notes a sharp increase in “1-star” reviews on Boataround’s Trustpilot page since August 2025.
On Facebook, sailing enthusiasts are gathering in groups to talk about the unfortunate experiences they have had while organising their cruise through Boataround, such as in the group Ahoy Croatia I Sailing & Yachting.
This sense of puzzlement is also shared by professional players in the yachting sector, who are beginning to speak out. For example, Christopher Lait, CEO of SailChecker.com, published a LinkedIn post a month ago expressing doubts about the reliability of the transfer confirmations sent by Boataround.
On the charter company side, reactions are also beginning to emerge. For example, North Sardinia Sail has decided to end all cooperation with Boataround, considering that its model puts the sector’s financial security at risk.
So, what should you do?
Boating and cruises are not just a way to spend a pleasant holiday. They are an invitation to freedom and to discovering the unknown. Today, this freedom, which should be accessible to everyone, is unfortunately sometimes compromised.
To prevent these cases from becoming the norm, we recommend that you systematically check the financial guarantee and legal status of any intermediary, and that you prioritise operators that are duly registered and/or use an escrow account.
Sources used in writing this article:
- [1] https://www.yacht.de/en/travel-and-charter/counsellor/online-charter-blinded-by-the-favourable-price/
- [2] https://capetan.club/en/boataround-reduceri-atragatoare-dar-cu-ce-pret/
- [3] https://www.giornaledellavela.com/2025/11/14/nightmare-cruises-whats-happening-to-the-boataround-platform/
- [4] https://registeruz.sk/cruz-public/domain/financialreport/show/9154025/552
- [5] https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/boataround.com?stars=1
- [6] https://www.facebook.com/groups/173085492710675/
- [7] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/christopherlait_yachtcharter-yachtcharter-boataround-activity-7383116071576182784-a3WU/
- [8] https://www.europe-consommateurs.eu/en/travelling-motor-vehicles/package-holiday.html
- [9] https://gisetudestouristiques.fr/en/encyclopedie/financial-guarantee-for-travel-agents/
- [10] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/holidays/package-travel/index_en.htm
- [11] https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/selling-in-eu/selling-goods-services/package-travel/index_en.htm
- [12] https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/running-business/developing-business/tourism/index_en.htm
- [13] https://www.untourism.int/global-code-of-ethics-for-tourism
- [14] https://www.diot-siaci-credit.com/offre/financial-guarantees-for-tourism/?lang=en
- [15] https://www.sih.sk/en/investicie/priame/boataround-kapitalova-investicia
- [16] https://www.crowdberry.eu/en/opportunities/boataround
- [17] https://www.miton.cz/en/blog/boats-are-the-new-hotels-and-boataround-is-the-place-to-book-them/
- [18] https://www.cbim.sk/ourportfolio
- [19] https://www.reflexcapital.com/founders/jana-and-pavel/
- [20] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_diligence
