Booking a Houseboat for a Group or Corporate Offsite

Groups are where houseboats make the most sense and where the booking goes wrong most often. The decisions worth getting right are settled weeks before anyone arrives at a jetty.

One big boat or several small ones?

Almost always one big boat, and the reasoning is both financial and practical.

Take sixteen people. Four two-bedroom boats at ₹10,000 each is ₹40,000. One eight-bedroom boat is ₹44,000 — marginally more, and you get one dinner table, one crew, one bill and one anchorage.

The hidden cost of splitting is that the boats do not necessarily moor together. Each captain picks a mooring on the day based on water and weather. Four boats can easily end up a kilometre apart, which means your group spends the best part of the trip — the evening at anchor — in four separate groups of four.

If the point of the trip is that everyone is together, book one boat.

What the sizes carry

Two guests per bedroom:

Boat	Sleeps	From
4-bedroom	8	₹18,000
5-bedroom	10	₹22,500
6-bedroom	12	₹33,000
8-bedroom	16	₹44,000

Per head, an eight-bedroom boat at ₹44,000 across sixteen people is ₹2,750 each, including four meals and the night. That is competitive with a mid-range hotel room for one person, and it is a considerably better story afterwards.

The boat with a conference hall

Worth knowing about specifically: one of our four-bedroom boats carries a dedicated conference and banquet hall seating sixteen, air-conditioned, with a service counter. The eight-bedroom boat has a banquet hall that seats the whole party at one table.

If your trip has any kind of agenda attached — a planning session, an awards dinner, a presentation — ask for that boat by name when you enquire, rather than booking a generic four-bedroom and hoping. There is one of it.

What it does not have is reliable connectivity. Mobile signal drops in the narrow Kuttanad channels and there is no WiFi. For an offsite that is usually a feature; for a session that needs a live video call it is a problem, and you should tell us so we keep you on routes with better coverage.

Groups larger than sixteen

Past sixteen guests overnight, you are into multiple boats and the mooring problem above. Two options:

Book two boats and ask us to moor them together. Possible, not guaranteed — it depends on water level and available bank space on the night. We will try, and we will tell you honestly beforehand that it is a best effort rather than a promise.

Switch to a day cruise. This is usually the better answer for a big group, and it is the one most companies land on.

Day cruises are the format for large parties

Nobody needs a bed, so the constraint disappears. A boat that sleeps eight overnight will comfortably carry a day group of twenty-five or thirty, because they are all on the deck and at the table rather than in rooms.

The per-head cost collapses accordingly. A private day cruise with lunch cooked onboard, at ₹7,500 for the boat:

Group	Per person
10	₹750
20	₹375
30	₹250

For an office outing that is a remarkable number, and it includes a cooked lunch, tea and a private boat for five and a half hours. See day trip cruises and the full comparison.

On some two-bedroom boats we also sell day cruises per head — ₹850 on Deluxe, ₹1,000 on Premium, with minimum numbers — if you would rather not charter a whole boat.

What to settle in advance

Groups fall over on logistics, not on boats.

• Headcount, firmly. Extra guests beyond the bed count are charged per head where the boat allows it: ₹750 on Deluxe, ₹1,000 on Premium. Tell us the real number.
• Dietary requirements, as a list. Pure vegetarian, jain, allergies. One cook is preparing for everyone from a galley smaller than your bathroom, and he buys the ingredients that morning. Surprises at dinner cannot be fixed.
• Alcohol. Not included on any boat. You may bring your own and the crew will serve it — but buy it before the jetty, because once the boat anchors there is no option at all. For a group, this is the single most commonly forgotten item.
• Arrival time. Boarding is noon and the boat anchors at 5:00 PM regardless. Thirty people arriving at 2 PM get three hours of cruising for the price of five. Aim for 11:30.
• Transport. Tell us if you need vehicles at the jetty for check-out; it is easier arranged the night before.
• One point of contact. Give us a single name and number. Coordinating thirty people through four WhatsApp threads is how details get lost.

Invoicing and payment

An advance reserves the boat, the balance is paid at check-in, and the advance goes through a secure payment link rather than card details over chat. GST is charged on top of the displayed rate. If you need a GST invoice for a company booking, say so at the time of booking with the company details — it is awkward to reissue afterwards.

Which season

For a group, the calculation differs from a couple’s. June to September is the cheapest window by a wide margin, and across sixteen people that difference is real money. The monsoon is also more forgiving for a group, because everyone is on a covered deck together rather than spread across a sun deck.

December and January are the most comfortable and the dearest, and large boats book out furthest ahead — there are only a handful of six and eight-bedroom boats on these waters. For a fixed corporate date in peak season, book weeks out, not days.

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Tell us your headcount, dates and whether the trip has an agenda, and we will come back with the boats that actually fit. Browse all 59 houseboat packages or the 2026 rates.