About European River Cruises
A small agency in Dubrovnik that does one thing: European river cruises, chosen honestly.
Planned by a captain, priced by the cruise line. We are the people who read the deck plans, watch the river gauges and add up what a cruise really costs, so that you do not have to.
Our story
Ten years on the Adriatic, then the rivers.
European River Cruises is the river-cruise sister company of Croatia Holidays d.o.o., the Dubrovnik agency behind My Croatia Cruise. Since 2016 that team has sailed with more than 10,000 guests from the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia along the Croatian coast, and earned over 5,000 reviews doing it.
Guests kept asking the same question at the end of a week on the Adriatic: what about the Danube, the Rhine, the Seine? Rather than bolt river cruises onto a coastal agency, we founded a separate company in June 2026 for that one job, with the same people, the same standards and the same rule about prices.
European River Cruises d.o.o. is registered in Dubrovnik and run by its owners. There are no investors to please and no cruise line on the board.
Your advisor
Captain Joe: a ship captain who now chooses cruises instead of steering them.
Captain Joe spent his working life on the bridge before joining us as our first river cruise advisor. He reads a deck plan the way a captain does: where the engine noise reaches, which cabins sit under the lounge, which side of the ship gets the afternoon sun on a given stretch of river, and what a low reading at the Kaub gauge means for a departure three weeks out.
Every recommendation on this site passes through him. When you send an inquiry, he is the person who answers it, and he answers within 15 minutes in working hours, Monday to Friday, 10:00 to 18:00 Central European Time. The badge at the top of this page shows whether he is at his desk right now, and our real median reply time this week.
Outside those hours you can leave your question with First Mate, his AI first officer, which prepares everything for him so that your answer is first in line the next morning.
How we work
Four rules we do not bend.
-
The fare is the cruise line’s own
You pay exactly what the line publishes. We are paid a commission by the cruise line, never a fee by you, so our advice does not get more expensive the more of it you take.
-
Every line, no favourite
We compare 6 cruise lines side by side and say plainly what each does well and what it charges on top of the fare. If the right ship is with a line we do not sell yet, we tell you.
-
One named advisor
You deal with one person from the first question to the day you sail. No ticket numbers, no call centre, no handover to someone who has not read your e-mails.
-
The river is part of the advice
Water levels decide whether ships sail in late summer. We watch the gauges every day and tell you the risk for your dates before you book, not after.
How we earn
The line pays us. You pay the line’s price.
Cruise lines sell most of their cabins through agencies and pay those agencies a commission out of the fare. That commission is our income. It does not change the price you pay, and it does not change which cruise we recommend: commission levels between the lines we sell are close enough that the only sensible thing to optimise is whether you come back for the next one.
We add no booking fees, no service charges and no “concierge” extras. If a cruise line runs a promotion, you get it exactly as the line publishes it, and we say so in the same words the line uses. What we will not do is invent our own promises about prices.
What we built
Tools that answer the questions travellers actually ask.
-
True cost comparison
Fare plus gratuities, drinks, excursions and transfers, per person, per line. The number the brochure leaves out.
-
River water levels today
Live gauges on the Rhine, Danube and Seine with the thresholds at which cruise ships stop, updated every 30 minutes.
-
Cabin Advisor
Deck plans with the captain’s notes: which cabins are quiet, which sit under the lounge, which face the sun.
-
First Mate
Captain Joe’s AI first officer. It plans from our catalogue only, quotes the lines’ real prices and hands over to a human the moment you ask.
The company
Registered, licensed, reachable.
- Legal name
- European River Cruises d.o.o.
- Registered office
- Vukovarska 26, 20000 Dubrovnik, Croatia
- Founded
- June 2026, Trgovački sud u Dubrovniku, MBS 090055156
- OIB / VAT
- 45810013460 / HR45810013460
- Directors
- Dražen Stjepić and Tibor Mladinić
- Sister company
- Croatia Holidays d.o.o. · My Croatia Cruise, Dubrovnik, since 2016
- Travel agency licence
- Ministry of Tourism and Sports registration in progress
Tell us who is travelling and when.
A named advisor replies within 15 minutes, Mon–Fri 10:00–18:00 CET.