The world’s great ferry routes, once scattered across dozens of clunky booking sites and regional operators, are about to become a lot easier to find.
Global travel platform Omio has struck a sweeping new partnership with Direct Ferries, giving its customers access to more than 2,000 ferry routes operated by 150 carriers worldwide. The agreement, signed in July 2025 and due to go live in December, folds one of the world’s largest ferry inventories directly into Omio’s fast-growing multimodal network.
It is a decisive move in Omio’s quiet but determined push to make boats as easy to book as buses, trains and planes and to stitch ferries into the fabric of modern digital travel, finally.
Until now, ferry travel has remained one of the most stubbornly fragmented corners of the transport industry. Routes are plentiful, demand is strong, but bookings often require a scavenger hunt across local operators and unfamiliar platforms, for a generation raised on single-screen travel planning, that friction has been increasingly out of place.
That changes with this deal.
The integration dramatically expands Omio’s footprint across Northern Europe, including Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK and Ireland, while also deepening its reach across Southeast Asia and North America. For the first time, it also opens large-scale ferry access in Australasia, Central America, and the Caribbean to Omio’s global customer base.
For Australians and regional travellers, the practical benefits are immediate. Popular Asian island routes such as Phuket–Koh Phi Phi, Phuket–Koh Lanta and Koh Samui–Koh Tao will now be available directly through Omio, alongside flights and buses, with no secondary booking platforms required.
And ferries, far from being a nostalgic niche, are thriving. Travellers favour them for their flexibility, comfort and the simple advantage of being able to carry vehicles, bikes or bulky luggage. Overnight cabins, quick inter-island hops and scenic coastal crossings have all helped drive steady demand.
Veronica Diquattro, President of B2C and Supply at Omio, said the agreement pushes the company closer to its long-held ambition of truly seamless global transport.
“We are thrilled to partner with Direct Ferries, instantly elevating our ferry booking options across multiple regions,” she said. “This collaboration represents a major leap towards our vision of seamless global multimodal travel, empowering travellers with greater choice, convenience, and flexibility than ever before.”
From the supply side, the deal also tackles a long-standing structural headache in the ferry sector: technical fragmentation.
Direct Ferries chief executive Niall Walsh said the company’s new API effectively acts as a global ferry distribution system, bringing order to a notoriously complex market.
“The ferry sector has traditionally been complex and fragmented, but the Direct Ferries Connect API, acting as a global ferry GDS, now simplifies this through a single agreement and one unified technical integration,” Walsh said. “It gives Omio instant access to our full worldwide ferry inventory.”
In an era where travellers expect everything to be searchable, comparable and bookable in seconds, this partnership is less about novelty than inevitability. Ferries have always been part of global travel. Omio is simply making sure they finally behave like it.
And for an industry that still runs on tides as much as technology, that is no slight shift.
by My Thanh Pham – (c) 2025
Read Time: 3 minutes.
About the Writer
My Thanh Pham has worn more travel hats than most luggage racks could hold. After taking a course in travel and tourism, she found herself deep in the business of arranging itineraries across South-East Asia, matching travellers to temples, beaches, and the occasional night train, with a knack for making the complicated look easy.
Not content with life behind the desk, she joined a Vietnamese airline, juggling reservations one day and the frontline bustle of the airport the next. It gave her a ringside seat at the theatre of travel: the missed flights, the joyous reunions, and the endless stories that airports never fail to serve up.
These days, My Thanh has swapped ticket stubs for a writer’s keyboard at Global Travel Media. Her words carry the same steady hand she once brought to bookings, guiding readers through the rich, unpredictable world of travel.
