A Curated Liveaboard Collective for Komodo

Labuan Bajo Liveaboard began in 2018 with a simple frustration. Travelers were paying genuine premium prices for what was sold as a once-in-a-lifetime Komodo voyage — and too often ending up on overbooked tourist boats with exhausted crews, thin safety equipment, and itineraries built around fuel cost rather than sunrise light. We grew up in this harbour. We knew which captains could be trusted, which hulls were sound, and which vessels were quietly worth every rupiah of their price-tag. So instead of building another booking site, we built a curated collective: a short list of boats we would put our own families on.Eight years and more than 3,000 guests later, that short list has become a hand-picked fleet of 15+ phinisi vessels, luxury motor yachts and dive-specialised boats — still curated, still personally sailed, still small enough that we know every captain by name. Every vessel passes our 47-point annual inspection. Every captain holds STCW certification. And every crew on a Labuan Bajo Liveaboard trip is paid 20–30% above the regional industry rate, because the people who cook your meals, brief your dives and read the tides for you matter every bit as much as the boat carrying you. We have stayed deliberately local: most of our 50-plus team were born in NTT province, within sight of the islands they now guide travelers through.