Terms of Service

BoatRental.com is operated by Boat Rental INTL LLC, a Florida limited liability company(“we”, “us”). Using the site means you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the site.

You must be at least 18 to create an account or send a booking request, and the information you give us must be accurate. Some markets impose their own minimum age to operate a vessel, which is separate from and may be higher than this.

We are the venue. Operators create their own listings, set their own prices, decide their own availability, and accept or decline every request themselves. When a booking is agreed, the contract for that trip is between you and the operator. We are not a party to it, we are not the carrier, and we do not own, operate or crew any vessel.

That distinction is not a disclaimer we hide behind, it describes real limits on what we can know. We do not inspect boats, verify seaworthiness, survey vessels, check a captain’s licence, confirm an operator’s insurance, or supervise any trip. Where a listing states a certification, a licence or a safety standard, that is the operator’s statement about their own business, not ours about theirs.

We publish local boating rules for markets where we have checked them against the issuing authority, with the date we checked and a link to the source. That is research, not advice, and rules change. Where we have not checked a market, the page says so. The operator is the person to ask, and the authority is the one to rely on.

Listings marked as example listings exist so that a market page is not empty. They are badged as such, they cannot be booked, and they are excluded from our sitemap. They are illustrations of the kind of boat a market offers, not inventory.

We do not provide, arrange, broker, verify, review or confirm insurance of any kind. We are not an insurer and not an insurance intermediary. Nothing on this site is cover, a certificate, an endorsement, or a representation that any cover exists.

Insuring the vessel, the business and the people aboard is entirely the operator’s responsibility. The Operator Agreement requires every operator to hold whatever insurance their market demands for carrying passengers for hire, and to keep it in force. We do not check that. We ask for no certificate, read no policy, hold no evidence of cover, and run no verification or approval process. A listing being published, an account being active, or a booking being accepted tells you nothing about whether an operator is insured.

The same is true of everything next to it: seaworthiness, surveys, maintenance, safety equipment, crew competence and credentials. We inspect none of it and we hold no opinion on it. If an operator’s cover matters to you, and on a charter it should, ask them for it directly and ask them to name you where that is appropriate. Asking is reasonable and a real operator will not mind.

If you are chartering, consider your own travel or accident cover as well. Boating carries inherent risk, including of serious injury and of death, and no policy anyone else holds changes that.

You send a request for specific dates and a party size. Sending a request costs nothing and books nothing, the operator confirms availability first, and may accept, decline, or propose a different price for your dates. A trip is only agreed when the operator accepts and you have agreed the price. There is no instant booking on this site and there will not be one: whether a particular party, on a particular date, in particular conditions can safely be taken out is a judgement only the operator can make.

The price you see is quoted from the operator’s own published rates and is frozen at the moment you request. A later change to a rate, or to our fee, does not rewrite a booking you have already made. An unanswered request expires after 72 hours.

An open date on a calendar means the boat is available to request, not that it is held for you. Nothing is held until the operator accepts.

One fee, published and flat, not tiered by insurance package, listing type, season or volume. The operator pays 12%, deducted from their price. Renters pay no platform fee at all, the price shown on the listing is the price charged, and nothing is added at checkout. On a $1,000 boat the renter pays $1,000 and the operator earns $880before Stripe’s payment processing.

Where a trip is paid by card, Stripe charges its own payment processing to the operator, from the operator’s Stripe balance, exactly as it would if the renter had booked on the operator’s own website. That is Stripe’s charge rather than ours, it is separate from and additional to our 12%, and we receive no part of it. We say so here because an operator reading “12%” should not be surprised by it later.

Fuel, crew beyond the captain, provisioning, dockage and gratuity are charter-industry costs billed by the operator, not fees of ours. Where a listing includes or excludes them, that is the operator’s term and it is stated on the listing.

Card payments through this site are being introduced. Your booking tells you which of the two applies to it, and you will never be asked to pay twice.

Paying by card through the site.Once the operator accepts, you pay by card and the booking is confirmed when the payment succeeds. The payment is made to the operator: it is created on the operator’s own Stripe account, their business name is what appears on your card statement, and the money settles with them. We never hold, escrow or route it, we take our 12% as a platform fee on that payment and nothing else. You have a limited window to pay after acceptance, shown on the booking; if it passes, the booking expires and the dates are released.

Settling directly with the operator. Where card payment through the site is not available for your booking, you and the operator settle between yourselves by whatever method you agree. In that case we hold no money at any point, which means we cannot issue a refund, reverse a charge or resolve a payment dispute, that is between you and the operator.

Nothing in these terms limits your right to dispute a card payment with your bank. We will not ask you to give that up and any suggestion elsewhere that you have is wrong.

For a trip paid by card through this site, the operator selects one of three cancellation tiers. The tier shown when you request is frozen onto your booking.Flexible returns everything up to 24 hours before departure. Moderate returns everything up to 7 days before and half up to 24 hours before. Strict returns everything up to 30 days before and half up to 7 days before. After the last step in the tier, a cancellation returns nothing.

If the operator cancels a trip paid by card through this site before departure, you are refunded in full whatever the tier says. The tier governs a renter changing their mind, not an operator withdrawing the boat.

Where you paid by card through the site, a refund is returned to the card you paid with, from the operator’s account, and our fee goes back in the same proportion — nobody keeps a fee on money that was returned. Refunds usually reach a card within five to ten days, which is the card networks’ timing and not ours. After a trip has started nothing is refunded automatically, and any refund is a decision taken by a person with the facts in front of them.

For a trip settled directly with the operator, ask for and agree their cancellation, rescheduling and refund terms before committing or paying. We do not collect that payment and cannot issue or enforce a refund of it. The site’s automatic card refund process does not apply to a payment made outside the site.

Weather, mechanical failure and captain’s discretion are ordinary parts of chartering. A captain may refuse or curtail a trip on safety grounds at any time, and should. If the operator cancels a site-paid trip before departure, the full refund above still applies. If a trip is cut short after it starts, any refund is assessed under the trip terms and applicable law. For a directly settled trip, the operator handles any refund under the terms you agreed with them and applicable law.

Listing is governed by the Operator Agreement, which you accept separately. In short: you may only list a boat you own or are authorised to charter, your listing must be accurate, you hold every licence, permit and insurance your market requires, you are the merchant of record for card payments and the carrier for the trip, listing is free, and there is no exclusivity.

You are responsible for meeting whatever your launch market requires of you. Some markets require a boating safety certificate to operate a vessel yourself. In Florida, a person born on or after 1 January 1988 generally needs the required boating-safety and identification documents to operate a vessel powered by a motor of 10 horsepower or greater, subject to the statutory exemptions and accepted certificates. Check the current rule with the issuing authority and your operator. On an operator-crewed charter, the operator supplies the captain; the operator may still require identification, eligibility evidence or trip documents from you and your guests.

You agree to give an accurate party size, to follow the operator’s and the captain’s instructions on board, and not to exceed a boat’s stated capacity. You are responsible for the people you bring, and you confirm that each of them accepts these terms and the risks of being on the water.

Messages between renters and operators pass through this site. Contact details, email addresses, phone numbers, links and social handles, are removed from messages before they are stored. That is deliberate: it is how the platform stays viable, and it protects both sides by keeping the conversation on a record either can point to.

Do not use the site to arrange a booking off-platform in order to avoid the fee, and do not use messaging to spam, harass or defraud anyone.

Do not scrape or bulk-copy the site, attempt to break its access controls, impersonate anyone, upload malicious code, post unlawful or misleading content, or use the site to break any law that applies to you. Automated access is limited to what our robots.txt permits.

The market guides, local rules, price research and the site itself are ours, and are protected by copyright. You may quote and cite them with attribution and a link, being cited is the point. You may not republish them wholesale as your own. If you believe something here infringes your copyright, our copyright policy says how to tell us.

You may close your account at any time. We may suspend or close an account, or remove a listing, where we reasonably believe it is unlawful, unsafe, materially inaccurate or in breach of these terms. Closing an account does not cancel bookings already agreed — those still have to be honoured or properly cancelled.

We are not obliged to monitor listings, messages or trips, and we do not undertake to. Acting on something we happen to learn about is not a promise to look for it, and it does not make us responsible for what we did not find.

The site is provided as it is. We do not promise it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that a listing, a price, an availability calendar or a market guide is accurate at the moment you read it.

Because the trip is a contract between the renter and the operator, we are not liable for what happens on it or around it: the condition or seaworthiness of a boat, whether an operator holds insurance or any licence, the competence or conduct of a captain or crew, a boat that is not as described, an operator who does not appear, a trip cut short or refused, damage to property, or a disagreement about money between the two parties to a charter.

To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability arising out of or relating to this site, whatever the cause of action, is limited to the greater of (a) the total amount that flowed through the platform on your bookings in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) $1,000. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or for lost profit, lost bookings or lost data, however caused.

None of that applies to liability that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded. That includes our own fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, our gross negligence or wilful misconduct, our obligation to pass on money we have actually collected and hold for someone, liability under Article 18 of the Athens Convention and Regulation (EC) No 392/2009 where either applies, and any liability a mandatory consumer law of your own country does not permit us to exclude. Where a court finds any exclusion or limitation in this section unenforceable, that exclusion is severed and the remainder of this section continues to apply to the fullest extent permitted.

You agree to indemnify us against claims arising from your own breach of these terms, your listings, or your conduct on a trip, except where the claim arises from our own fraud or gross negligence.

We may update these terms as the site changes. Every version carries a number and an effective date at the top of this page; this is version 3. Continuing to use the site after a change takes effect means you accept it, and if a change is significant and you have an account, we will tell you. Operators get at least 15 days’ notice of changes to the Operator Agreement, which is a separate commitment made there.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Florida, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and the courts of FL are where disputes about them are heard. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere, this does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory laws of your own country, or of the right to bring proceedings where those laws say you may.

If any part of these terms is held unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.

Questions about these terms go to info@boatrental.com. How we handle personal data is set out in our privacy policy.