Direct Ferries launches ferry search inside ChatGPT

Direct Ferries has launched a ferry search and discovery service inside ChatGPT, making more than 4,000 ferry routes searchable through the AI platform.

Users can search routes from more than 300 operators through conversational prompts, then click through to Direct Ferries to complete a booking. The service is available through the standard free version of ChatGPT in markets where the platform operates.

The launch brings part of the travel market into AI trip planning that has remained difficult to aggregate. Ferry travel carries 4.4 billion passengers a year, according to Direct Ferries, but the sector is spread across hundreds of regional operators and has often remained offline or tied to separate booking systems.

Over 25 years, Direct Ferries has built links with operators to assemble a single pool of inventory. Its database now spans routes across every inhabited continent, covering journeys from short island crossings to longer international services.

Fragmented market

Unlike flights and rail, ferry travel has lacked broad integration with search tools and digital assistants. Operators use different systems, formats, APIs and levels of real-time availability, making it harder for a single platform to present consistent route and pricing information across the market.

The new Model Context Protocol server underpins the ChatGPT service by giving AI platforms a standard connection to Direct Ferries' route inventory. The same system will also sit behind Direct Ferries Connect, its business-to-business product for travel companies that want to add ferry search to their own AI tools.

Direct Ferries serves about 5 million passengers globally each year. Compared with the wider ferry market, that highlights both the scale of overall demand and how widely booking remains spread across local and regional providers.

Niall Walsh, chief executive of Direct Ferries, described the launch as a continuation of the company's effort to unify a scattered market.

"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," Walsh said.

Search process

The service is designed to let travellers describe journeys in natural language rather than enter route details into a conventional booking engine. Within ChatGPT, users can review route options and live pricing before being directed to Direct Ferries to complete the transaction.

That approach reflects a broader shift in travel search, with conversational interfaces increasingly used as a starting point for trip planning. Airlines and rail operators have been more visible in this shift, while ferry services have largely been absent despite their role in linking islands, coastal regions and remote communities.

For Direct Ferries, the integration places its inventory inside a consumer AI platform at a time when travel companies are testing how customers search, compare and book transport. The company argues that scale matters in ferry distribution because no single operator offers the breadth of routes needed for a global search experience.

Chris Corderoy, chief technology officer of Direct Ferries, said the main technical challenge was standardising data from a diverse operator base.

"The key challenge with ferry market data has always been fragmentation, with no defined industry standard for integration. Ferry operators run different systems, formats, APIs and levels of real-time availability. 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 the complexity of global ferry travel at source, so any agentic search platform connecting to it gets clean, accurate, real-time inventory across 4,000 routes globally without needing to handle the underlying fragmentation itself. This allows for real-time conversational pricing and availability for global ferry travel," Corderoy said.

The company's claims point to a wider contest among travel platforms to become the data layer behind AI-driven planning tools. In the ferry sector, where supplier relationships and system integration are often built market by market, that may favour intermediaries that have already spent years connecting operators and standardising inventory.

Direct Ferries said no other offering inside ChatGPT currently provides ferry inventory at the same scale, with coverage spanning more than 4,000 routes across every inhabited continent.