Phi Phi private boat tour: the three listings

Three listings, one kind of boat. Of the eighteen trips bookable on this site, three use the word private about themselves, and all three put you on a longtail — the long wooden boat with the propeller on a shaft behind it that has always worked these islands. Every phi phi longtail boat tour on the site works the same hull, private or shared, so what you are buying is the day and not the vessel. There is no private catamaran here and no private motor yacht. If you had pictured a phi phi island speed boat tour with nobody else aboard, these eighteen listings do not have one.

What changes between them is the clock and the starting point. The $50 boat runs three to four hours and starts on Koh Phi Phi itself. The $104 one also starts there and hands you the choice of three, four, six or seven hours, with a local captain named in its description. The $393 day begins in Phuket and runs eleven hours door to door — but only four of those eleven are on the private longtail. Its own description says the rest plainly: private hotel transfers and a shared speedboat for the crossing. That sentence is the single most useful thing on this page, because an eleven-hour phi phi private boat tour and four private hours inside an eleven-hour day are two different purchases.

What none of them says. Not one of the three descriptions states how many people the fare is for. That is unusual enough to be worth repeating: the number you see on the card could be the whole boat or it could be one seat, and the listing text does not decide it. Check that line on the booking page before you compare these three with anything shared, and before you divide anything by the number of people travelling with you. Nothing on this page assumes an answer, because the data has none.

The verdict. If you are two or three people and the point is to stop where you want and leave when you want, the $104 longtail is the one to look at first: it has by far the most reviews of the three, it names a captain, and it is the only listing here that lets you buy three hours or seven. If what you actually want is simply to see Maya Bay, the shared boats start at $18 and the gap is large.

What the gap buys. A Phi Phi Islands boat tour that is shared sets the route and the clock for you; the private descriptions are the only ones that talk about choosing. A phi phi island big boat tour exists on this site — the catamarans — but never as a private hire. That is the difference the text supports. What the text does not support is any claim about crowds on board, group size or who else is coming, because none of the three says.

Where the comparison breaks. You cannot line these fares up against the shared ones until you know what each covers, and for the private three that line is missing. A Koh Phi Phi boat tour at $18 and a phi phi private boat tour at $50 are only comparable once the booking page tells you whether the second number is one seat or the whole boat. Ask that before you decide anything else.

Only one listing makes the hours a choice, so this question has one address. Three hours covers the two places all three descriptions name, Maya Bay and Pileh Lagoon, and little else. Four adds room for the stops the same description lists, Monkey Bay and Viking Cave. Six and seven are the versions that leave time in the turquoise water of Pileh Lagoon rather than time on the move.

One warning worth having in writing: none of the eighteen listings on this site says how much of its day is spent swimming. A phi phi snorkeling longtail boat is sold by the hour, not by the time in the sea: the hours in the table are the whole outing, transfers included. So a seven-hour booking is seven hours of your day, not seven hours of snorkelling, and a phi phi private boat tour sold as eleven hours is mostly getting there and back.