Ferry travel is now searchable within ChatGPT, marking the first time that the fragmented, largely offline ferry market has been made accessible through conversational artificial intelligence. The integration, launched by UK-based aggregator Direct Ferries, enables travellers to find routes across every inhabited continent using natural language, with live pricing and availability displayed before they click through to complete a booking on the company’s own platform.
Ferry travel arrives in ChatGPT
The integration is built on OpenAI’s enterprise infrastructure and is available via the standard, free ChatGPT model to users globally wherever the chatbot is present. It connects more than 300 ferry operators and 4,000 routes through a single interface, bringing what Direct Ferries describes as the first global coverage of ferry inventory to AI-driven trip planning. No other platform in ChatGPT currently offers ferry search at this scale; existing tools cover only specific regions or individual operators.
Users describe their journey in plain English — for example, “ferry from Dover to Calais tomorrow morning” — and receive route options, real-time pricing and schedules within the ChatGPT conversation. To finalise the booking they are directed to Direct Ferries’ website. The integration went live immediately and the company says further AI-led developments are planned.
How Direct Ferries built the standard for ferry data
Powering the integration is Direct Ferries’ new Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, a standardised interface that makes the company’s full global inventory accessible to AI platforms. The MCP server resolves what Chris Corderoy, Chief Technology Officer of Direct Ferries, describes as the key challenge with ferry market data: fragmentation. “Ferry operators run different systems, different formats, different APIs and different levels of real-time availability,” he said. “What we’ve built with Direct Ferries is that global standard, first with our Connect API and now with our latest MCP Server interface. It resolves all the complexity of global ferry travel at source, so that any Agentic search platform connecting to it gets clean, accurate, real-time inventory across 4,000 routes globally without the need to handle any of the underlying fragmentation itself. This allows for real-time conversational pricing and availability for global ferry travel.”
The same infrastructure is being offered to B2B partners through Direct Ferries Connect, the company’s proprietary technology arm. Partners such as Omio, Holiday Extras and Rome2Rio already use the Connect API to integrate ferry ticket sales into their own products. As of November 2025, the API supported over 4,000 routes across more than 260 operators, using a combination of direct API connections and a “Virtual Inventory” system for operators without direct digital access. The B2B offering includes white-label options and a travel agent booking platform.
The fragmented ferry market
Ferry travel is a 4.4 billion passenger market, yet for decades it has operated largely offline, scattered across hundreds of regional operators with no common digital infrastructure. While flights and rail have long been integrated into aggregators and AI assistants, ferry travel remained absent from these platforms — despite being a critical transport link for islands, coastlines and communities worldwide. Direct Ferries has spent 25 years building the infrastructure to connect that market. Founded in 1999 by Howard Davies and headquartered in London, the company now aggregates more than 4,000 routes across over 300 operators, serving approximately 5 million passengers annually. In 2022 it reported selling over 3 million tickets, and it is ranked number one on independent review sites Feefo and Trustpilot.
Direct Ferries received investment from private equity firm Livingbridge in 2016, and in June 2023 secured a new investment round from ICG, with Livingbridge, the founding Davies family and management also reinvesting. The refinancing was intended to support international growth across the company’s consumer, B2B and freight channels. CEO Niall Walsh, who joined Direct Ferries in 2018 and previously served as Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Operating Officer, said: “Ferry is one of the most fragmented travel markets in the world. Thousands of routes, hundreds of operators, most of them historically offline and impossible to search in one place. We’ve spent 25 years fixing that, aggregating global supply into a single inventory that no individual operator could ever build. Bringing that into ChatGPT is the next step in the same journey we’ve been on since day one.”
AI adoption across the ferry industry
The launch comes as the wider ferry industry explores AI applications. Stena Line has implemented AI for voyage optimisation, achieving a 1–5% reduction in fuel consumption and emissions, and uses an AI assistant called “Stina” to handle passenger queries by connecting to over 20 business systems. Ferryhopper, another ferry booking platform, has launched a ChatGPT plugin that provides real-time information on schedules, routes and prices. These developments underscore a broader shift towards AI as a starting point for travel planning, a gap that Direct Ferries’ integration addresses directly. The Direct Ferries ChatGPT integration is now live and can be accessed at directferries.com/chatgpt.
