Affiliate disclosure
The short version: some links here earn us a commission, you pay the same either way, and nobody pays to be featured.
Which links are affiliate links
Every "Check availability" button, and most in-text links that open a cruise or tour listing, points to GetYourGuide or Viator and carries our partner tag. A few in-text links point to relevant extras a cruise visitor might add, such as a Culloden battlefield or Isle of Skye day tour on those same two platforms, and the "Check rates" buttons on our where-to-stay guide open hotel pages on Expedia through the Travelpayouts network. Book after clicking any of them and the platform pays us a share of the commission it already earns. Your price does not change, because our cut comes out of the platform's margin rather than being added to your ticket, and the fare you see is the fare you would see arriving at that listing directly.
Those are our affiliate relationships: GetYourGuide and Viator, the marketplaces where the Loch Ness cruises, all run by Loch Ness by Jacobite, are sold, plus a handful of secondary Highland experiences near Inverness; and Expedia, reached through Travelpayouts, for the hotel links only. There is no display advertising, no sponsored posts and no paid reviews, and any cruise videos embedded on the site earn us nothing at all. If another network is ever added, this page and the footer disclosure will name it before the first link goes live, not after.
What it does not change
- Inclusion. Every cruise that clears the tests is here: a real Loch Ness or Caledonian Canal sailing, genuinely bookable right now by an individual, with published departures, a live product page and a rating on enough reviews to mean something. Because one operator, Loch Ness by Jacobite, runs every cruise bookable on these platforms, the same sailing often appears on both marketplaces; where it does, it is treated as one option rather than two, since counting a cruise twice would pad the lineup while splitting its reviews across two cards.
- Ordering. No operator can buy a position and none has been offered one. Where a category leads with one cruise, that cruise is the most-reviewed in its category, a rule you can check yourself against the numbers printed on the cards.
- What we say about them. An open top deck that is glorious in summer and cold on an April morning gets described that way, not just photographed at sunset. A 50-minute loop is written up as castle views from the water rather than an hour ashore where that is the honest read. A thin review count is called thin instead of borrowed against a busier sailing's reputation.
- What we leave out of the cruise lineup. Boats that only book direct, and anything that is not a bookable Loch Ness or Caledonian Canal cruise, are off the ranked cruise cards entirely, whatever they pay. A few land-based Highland day tours and Inverness hotels do appear as clearly labelled in-text extras for visitors building a wider trip, but they are never mixed into the cruise rankings or dressed up as sailings. A listing that is really the same Jacobite departure under another product page does not get a second card either.
- Things we earn nothing from. The view down the loch from Dores beach, the quiet south-shore road, the free viewpoint at the Fort Augustus locks, and booking straight with the operator all pay us zero, and they still get their say wherever they beat a paid ticket.
Ratings, review counts and prices
Every rating and review count here is the marketplace's own published number, read off the live listing and then checked a second time on an independent pass before it was printed. Nothing is averaged across platforms, rounded up or invented, and where the two reads disagreed the live listing figure is what prints while the disagreement stays on file.
Prices work the same way and come with a bigger caveat. What you see is a current from-price, the cheapest per-person option on that sailing when it was read. A short 50-minute cruise, a castle-landing cruise and a full coach-and-boat day trip are different tickets at different prices, so the headline number on one is not the number on another, and the pages keep them apart. Fares also move with the date, the option you choose and the currency the platform shows for your region, because these listings price in pounds and can convert to your home currency depending on where you book from. The live listing is always the authority on what you will be charged.
If you would rather not use our links
Search the operator's name on GetYourGuide or Viator directly, or book on the operator's own site. Loch Ness by Jacobite sells all of these sailings at jacobite.co.uk. We would genuinely rather you got out on the water. The homepage, the FAQ and the about page work exactly as well as research whether or not you ever click a booking link.
Questions about any of this: email us. How the listings are checked in the first place is on the about page.