Lauttainfo New Zealand is part of lauttainfo.com, a small independent project that grew out of a guide to Finnish road ferries. It has no connection with any boat operator, regional council, Auckland Transport or the Department of Conservation, and none of them pays for it. Advertising covers the costs.
Many of the boats on this site are not ferries in the timetable sense. Some are water taxis that go when booked, some drop trampers at the start of a Great Walk, some run only when enough people are going. Each page says plainly which kind of service it is, because that decides whether you can simply turn up at the wharf or need to book days ahead.
Our method is simple and a little slow. Someone reads the operator's own timetable, fare page or booking conditions, or DOC's page for a track, and saves a copy on that day. The page then shows the reading date beside each table. If two official pages disagree, or a figure only appears on a third-party booking site, it stays off the page and the text explains the gap; a blank you understand beats a price that is wrong when you reach the jetty.
Summer timetables arrive in spring and some services stop altogether in winter, so every page carries the date it was checked and when it is due for another look. The buttons at the top go straight to the operator, which is where weather cancellations are posted first.
Seen something out of date? Email [email protected] with the service and what you noticed; we confirm it with the official source before changing the page.