About Hvar Coastal

Hvar Coastal is an independent travel guide to Hvar, the long limestone island off Croatia’s Dalmatian coast — and to the crossings, coves, villages and stays that make up a week there.

We are not a booking platform, a tourist board, or a hotel group’s marketing arm. Nobody pays us to appear on this site.

Why this site exists

Hvar is one of the most-searched islands in Croatia and one of the worst-served by English-language travel writing. Most of what ranks falls into two categories: listicles assembled by people who have never taken the catamaran, and party-island coverage that stopped being accurate around 2018. Neither helps if what you actually need to know is whether the Stari Grad car ferry or the Hvar Town catamaran is the right boat for your trip — a decision that is genuinely irreversible once you have booked a villa on the wrong side of the island.

We write for the traveller who reads five sources before booking and wants the one that commits to an answer.

How we research

• We name the trade-off. Every comparison on this site — Hvar Town or Stari Grad, catamaran or car ferry, Blue Cave or a Pakleni-only boat day — ends with a recommendation, not a shrug. Where the honest answer is “it depends”, we say what it depends on.
• We check operators and timetables at the source. Ferry information is checked against Jadrolinija’s published timetables rather than against other blogs. Sailing patterns change every season, and a guide that quotes last year’s schedule is worse than no guide.
• We date everything. Every article carries a publication date, and a separate modified date once it has been revised. Prices and schedules move; you are entitled to see how old the page is before you trust it.
• We correct in public. If we get something wrong, we fix the page rather than quietly deleting it.

Editorial standards

• No paid placements. No hotel, villa, charter company, tour operator or rental agency can pay to appear on this site, to be ranked higher, or to have criticism removed. We have declined this.
• Commission never sets the ranking. Some links here are affiliate links, and commission rates vary between partners by a factor of several. Those rates play no part in what we recommend or in what order. Where we think a well-known tour is overpriced, we say so — including when we would earn on the booking.
• We say when something is not worth it. A guide that recommends everything is an advertisement. If a beach does not justify the drive, or a tour is better bought on the quay than online, that is what the page will tell you.
• Affiliate links are labelled. Every commercial link routes through a /go/ URL and is marked rel="sponsored" in the page source, so it is machine-identifiable as commercial rather than editorial. The full breakdown is on our affiliate disclosure page.
• Some links earn us nothing. Ferry operators, official timetables and flight search links are included because you need them, not because they pay. We would rather send you to the right timetable than to a partner.

How the site is funded

Hvar Coastal is reader-supported through affiliate commission. When you book a tour, a stay or a car through one of our links, the partner pays us a percentage of their margin — you pay exactly the same price as you would going direct. That is the entire business model. There is no advertising, no sponsored content, and no paid newsletter.

If you find the site useful, booking through our links is what keeps it being written.

Who publishes this

Hvar Coastal is published by Strandway Systems, based in Prince Edward Island, Canada, which also operates a small group of independent regional travel guides including Adriatic Yacht Guide for Croatian and Montenegrin charter planning.

Guides are written and edited by the Hvar Coastal editorial team.

Corrections and contact

Timetables change, restaurants close, and prices move. If you find something out of date or wrong on this site, tell us and we will fix it: contact@hvarcoastal.com.

We read every correction. We do not accept guest posts, link insertions, or paid placements, and enquiries about them will not receive a reply.

Start here

New to the island? Begin with the decision that shapes everything else — the Split to Hvar ferry — then pick your base with Hvar Town vs Stari Grad, or browse the four pillars: Luxury Stays, Coastal & Maritime, Culture & Inland and Logistics.