"Can we just get a boat to take us there?" is the question we hear most at the pier, and it usually means the guest hasn't yet realized there are three different answers hiding inside it. A water taxi gets you from A to B. A tour shows you the sights along a fixed route. A rental hands you the wheel and lets you build your own route. They solve different problems, and picking the wrong one is the single most common regret we hear about after the fact.
Here is the honest breakdown, from the booking desk that fields this question every day.
The Short Version
Water taxi: pay for speed, not sightseeing
A water taxi (we run these as private boat transfers) is the simplest of the three: you name a start point and an end point, and the boat takes the most direct line between them. No stops, no narration, no fixed schedule — you book the slot you want. It is the right call when the goal is arrival, not the journey itself: getting from a hotel pier straight to Kotor Old Town, or from the Tivat side of the bay to a dinner reservation in Perast without driving the coastal road.
The trade-off is obvious once you say it out loud: you pay for exclusivity and directness, and you get exactly the route you asked for — nothing more. If Our Lady of the Rocks or the Blue Cave happen to sit on your line, you will pass them, but the boat won't slow down or stop unless you've booked that in. Most transfers within the inner bay run in the €70-120 range per boat, not per person, which makes them genuinely competitive for a group of 4 or more against buying that many shared-tour tickets.
Where a water taxi can actually take you
The bay isn't one uniform stretch of water — it's split into speed zones, and the zone decides your transit time more than the distance on a map suggests. Here's the real breakdown from our own private boat transfers route sheet, grouped the way we actually run them.
| Destination | Zone | Docking point | One-way | Round-trip |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perast | Zone 1 · 6 kn inner | Public Perast pier | 25 min | 50 min |
| Our Lady of the Rocks | Zone 1 · 6 kn inner | Island jetty | 25 min | 50 min |
| St. George Island | Zone 1 · 6 kn inner | View pass, no landing | 20 min | 40 min |
| Hyatt Regency Kotor Bay | Zone 1 · 6 kn inner | Hotel floating dock, Donji Stoliv | 10 min | 20 min |
| Blue Kotor Bay Premium Spa | Zone 1 · 6 kn inner | Resort pier, Muo | 15 min | 30 min |
| Forza Mare / Forza Terra | Zone 1 · 6 kn inner | Hotel pier, Dobrota | 15 min | 30 min |
| Risan | Zone 1 · 6 kn inner | Risan town pier | 40 min | 1h 20m |
| Porto Montenegro / Regent | Zone 2 · 10 kn Verige | Marina berth, Tivat | 40 min | 1h 20m |
| Tivat Airport Water Terminal | Zone 2 · 10 kn Verige | Kukuljina — most requested | 50 min | 1h 40m |
| Nikki Beach Montenegro | Zone 2 · 10 kn Verige | Beach club jetty, Tivat Bay | 50 min | 1h 40m |
| Tivat town waterfront | Zone 2 · 10 kn Verige | Public riva | 45 min | 1h 30m |
| The Chedi Luštica Bay | Zone 2 · 10 kn Verige | Marina drop-off | 1h 30m | 3h |
| One&Only Portonovi | Zone 3 · open water | Resort marina, Kumbor | 45 min | 1h 30m |
| Lazure Hotel & Marina | Zone 3 · open water | Hotel marina, Meljine | 55 min | 1h 50m |
| Herceg Novi Old Town Port | Zone 3 · open water | Town port | 1h 5m | 2h 10m |
| Heritage Grand Perast by Rixos | Zone 3 · open water | Perast waterfront berth | 25 min | 50 min |
One caveat worth knowing before you book: Mamula Island, Žanjice Beach, the Blue Cave, and Rose all sit right at the open-Adriatic mouth of the bay, past Zone 3. Those runs are fair-weather only — we don't guarantee a daily transfer to them the way we do inside the bay, because the same open water that makes them beautiful also makes them exposed. If one of those is your target, build a weather buffer day into the trip rather than scheduling it for your last afternoon.
Landing at a hotel pier specifically? We hold docking permission for regular drop-offs at Regent Porto Montenegro, the Porto Montenegro marina itself, Hyatt Regency Kotor Bay, Heritage Grand Perast by Rixos, and Forza Mare/Forza Terra. Other resorts — One&Only Portonovi, The Chedi Luštica Bay, Nikki Beach, Mamula — are arranged on request, subject to that resort's own dock and any docking fee. See the full route table and current per-boat pricing on the private boat transfers page.
Boat tour: the sights are the point, someone else drives
A tour is built around a route, not a destination. Shared tours run fixed departures — typically 09:00, 12:00, 15:00, and 18:00 in peak season — and follow a set loop through the bay's headline stops: the Blue Cave, Our Lady of the Rocks, Mamula Island, and a swim stop, depending on the tour length. You are on the boat with other guests, the captain narrates, and the price reflects that shared cost: our 3-hour Blue Cave Adventure runs about €30-35 per person.
Private tours keep the same route-driven format but drop the other guests: you book the whole boat, and the captain can flex timing and stops within the plan. A private Perast and Our Lady of the Rocks tour costs more per person for a couple than the shared version, but for a group of four or more, splitting one private boat is usually cheaper per head than four shared tickets — and you get the boat to yourselves.
Rental: you decide the route, our captain drives
Every rental at Montenegro Submarine comes with our licensed captain — there's no self-drive option, and guests never take the helm. What you get instead is full control over the plan: you tell the captain where to go and how long to stay, and they handle the boat. Want to linger an extra 40 minutes at the Blue Cave because the light is perfect? Skip Perast entirely and just find a quiet swim spot instead? A rental is the only one of the three that lets you change your mind mid-trip, with someone else doing the driving.
Our smallest rental starts around €90-100 for a half-day, which undercuts a private tour of comparable length while still giving you the flexibility to set your own route — the captain and fuel logistics are already handled, so there's no extra math or paperwork on your end.
Captain's Tip
From our booking desk: the question that actually decides this for most people isn't budget, it's whether a fixed itinerary works for them or not. If a set route sounds fine, book a tour. If you'd rather call the shots on where and how long, book a rental — our captain still drives either way.
Side-by-side: which one wins for your trip
- Pick the water taxi if you have a specific start and end point — hotel to Old Town, marina to a dinner reservation — and don't need the sightseeing built in.
- Pick a shared tour if this is your one boat trip of the visit and you want the Blue Cave, Mamula, and Our Lady of the Rocks covered without planning anything yourself.
- Pick a private tour if you're a group of 4+ and want the same route as the shared tour, but with the boat to yourselves and some flexibility on timing.
- Pick a rental if you want to set your own route, linger where you like, and don't mind a short skipper briefing before you cast off.
Want the highlights, no planning required?
A 3-hour shared tour covering the Blue Cave, Mamula Island, and Our Lady of the Rocks from Kotor — fixed route, fixed price, someone else drives.
Want to set your own route instead?
A private rental with our captain — go where you want, stay as long as you want.
Still just need to get from point A to point B? See our private boat transfers page for direct water-taxi pricing across the bay, or if you're specifically weighing Perast against driving there yourself, our Perast by boat or by car comparison covers that exact decision in more detail.
