Essential Tour Info

Essential Info for your Whale Swim

When is your Booking Office in town open?

Our Booking Office at Shop 4, 1 Kennedy Street Exmouth opens at 9:00am seven days a week, and closes at 5:30pm. Come by and have a talk through your plans and find out more about the best snorkeling sites of the Ningaloo Reef too, as well as Yardie Creek gorge walks and snorkeling, Turquoise Bay’s famous drift snorkel, and Coral Bay and its endemic manta ray tours too.

Emergency Calls After Hours

The Tour Manager’s private mobile phone number is 0472 635 813 for emergency calls outside of opening hours. Please do NOT use this number after hours unless it is honestly for an emergency – its not fair on him at all to do this. (In all situations other than an emergency, please email us or even sms him on the above number.) Please also be aware that this phone is not manned 24/7 so we may not be there to answer it when you call. If this is the case, please leave a message and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

What to do if you miss your pickup in the morning?

Sometimes guests fail to meet our tour bus when picking you up to head out on your humpback whale tour. In this case, you will have the option of either:

1. Making your own way out to Tantabiddi (if you have your own car) to meet the bus when it arrives at no later than 8am
2. Coming out again on our next available tour standby, to try again. No refunds or guarantees apply in this situation – if there are no spaces available, you will forfeit your booking – so please be out the front of your accommodation ready for your pickup at the designated time.

How To Join Your Humpback Whale Tour

Please advise us where you will be spending the night before your cruise so we can organise where best to meet you to join your humpback whale tour. Please do this when making your booking, or alternatively as soon as possible after you have booked your accommodation.

If you have not told us where to pick you up, please meet us at the Exmouth Visitors Centre on the morning of your tour at 7:20am sharp. Please do not be late as the bus is usually running on a tight schedule and may have to depart without you.

We pick up all customers staying in Exmouth township from the front door of their accommodation for their humpback whale cruise at around 7:00 to 7:30am. We pick up customers staying at Seabreeze Resort at 7.35am, Lighthouse Bay Caravan Park at 7.45am and Yardie Creek Caravan Park and Homestead 7.55am. We drop off at the end of the humpback whale tour too.

Customers camping in the National Park can elect to meet our tour bus at the Tantabiddi Boat Ramp at 8am on the morning of your humpback whale tour instead – it saves you the drive back into town.

What to bring

Bring your bathers, wallet or credit card, a towel, sunglasses and a hat, sunscreen, and sun-smart clothing to protect you from the sun. If you think you may need it, seasickness tablets from a pharmacy too – please see section below on seasickness. We also recommend you bring a warm top as the winds can cool the temperature down even on hot days. And don’t forget your camera – but be sure to take care of it during your day. (As for everything you bring on board, every care taken, no responsibility accepted.) Our crew love it if you bring lots of smiles too!

Tickets and Reservations

Bookings are absolutely essential as many tours during the season are booked out months beforehand. Please ensure you book early to get your preferred dates to avoid disappointment. Book Online or call our reservations team on (08) 9949 4777 (if in Australia) or +61 8 9949 4777 (if outside of Australia) to make a booking during office hours.

Paying for your humpback whale tour booking

For your sake and ours, we prefer to take payment in full at the time of you making your booking. Simplicity means fewer moving parts, and fewer moving parts means fewer break downs!

However, partial payments are fine too. We require a payment of 20% on every humpback whale tour ticket when you make your booking, which is non-refundable. (More is fine, and will be refundable if you cancel as per the terms and conditions below.)

The balance of your payment will then be deducted automatically from your credit card fourteen days before your cruise, to guarantee your place on the cruise on the date you have booked.

If payment cannot be taken from your credit card at this time, our bookings team will make every effort to contact you to organise to take your payment using the mobile phone number or email you have provided. We will hold your booking pending payment up to 72 hours before the start of your scheduled humpback whale cruise. If payment is not received by this time, we will unfortunately need to resell the ticket that you have not paid for, to ensure we don’t lose this money needlessly.

It’s important to note that only Telstra network has coverage for mobile phones in Exmouth currently. If your mobile phone is with another network you will be unable to receive mobile calls whilst in the area. So please ensure you check your emails regularly in the week leading up to you boarding your humpback whale tour bus.

Credit Card surcharge

Please note a 1.5% surcharge applies to Visa and Mastercard payments received. Due to high fees, we do not accept payment via American Express or Diners Club. (Our sincere apologies for this inconvenience but their fee structure makes it uneconomical for us to offer these cards to our customers.)

Tour Cancellations

Cruises departing are subject to bad weather, circumstances beyond our control, and minimum number of passengers required to depart. When you book we will ask you for your email address, a mobile phone number and the name of the accommodation where you are staying. If we need to cancel for whatever reason – which happens very rarely – we will make every effort to contact you to let you know, and to reschedule you onto another tour to go swimming with a humpback whale.

On rare occasions we have to cancel a tour due to bad weather at the very last minute. This means our office may be trying to contact you between 6.00 – 7.00am on the morning of your cruise, so it would be helpful if you could have your mobiles switched on just in case. If we are not able to reach you we will then contact your accommodation to request they let you know as soon as possible, and / or drive around in our bus to inform you in person.

In advance, our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience if this proves necessary. However, safety is not something that we are prepared to cut corners with – its perhaps our single most important responsibility to our passengers.

There is no charge to you if we have to cancel due to weather. (Refer Bad Weather Guarantee above.)

Waiver of liability

All passengers are required to sign a waiver of liability to participate in a humpback whale cruise. This will be completed on-board the bus or the boat on the day of your cruise prior to your departure. We respect the passenger’s right to decline signing the waiver. However, this will result in the passenger not being able to enter the water at any time during the cruise and does not remove the passenger’s obligations stated in our Cancellations and Conditions policy.