The Next Wave for Experience Travel Businesses: 3 Charts

30.08.2023 - 16:11 / skift.com / Brian Chesky / Selene Brophy

Ongoing demand for experiences points to a potential market worth hundreds of millions of dollars. With 70% of tours and activities still offline, companies are investing in tech that reduces booking friction and also enhancing the in-person experience.

This fragmentation of the tours and activities sector and the opportunity for online travel agencies and travel businesses to increase their market share will be a big discussion at the Skift Global Forum in New York on September 26-28. We’ll be hearing from industry leaders Airbnb, American Express Travel, Expedia, GetYourGuide, Google, and Intrepid.

Skift Research analysis shows travelers’ appetite for immersive experiences remains strong, with travelers caring more about “creating a travel experience that meets their expectations than about the cost.” We spotlighted the Rise of the Experiential Traveler at Skift’s Global Travel Forum in 2015.

This year, we’ll be digging into how travel companies are trying to tap into this vastly under-served tours and activities segment. Curating branded experiences, such as TUI’s plan to further invest in its Collection Experiences and the relaunch of Originals by GetYourGuide earlier this year, are just some of the examples we’ve seen.

GetYourGuide’s Originals launch with ‘Turning the Lights On at the Vatican Museums‘ saw 15,000 people applying for the initial one of the seven limited tours in 2022. TUI Collections, as an example, offers a full-day Majorca tour in Spain, including a vintage train ride and catamaran cruise to Sa Calobra beach, guided by TUI staff, and including TUI transfers. Hospitality brands have also gotten into crafting more unique experiences, such as Marriott Bonvoy’s Moments.

While Airbnb has halted the intake of new experiences to “perfect its core services”, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky’s vision for the platform is a closely anticipated discussion at this year’s Skift Global Forum.

Online marketplaces or distribution platforms account for less than 30% of the booking landscape, with no single business owning more than 5% to 6% of the market for experiences, forecast to be $300 billion by 2025.

With its two-branded experiences strategy enhanced through Viator, Tripadvisor now sees experiences account for half of its earnings. However, meeting the demand through paid search and performance marketing means sacrificing profitability for growth. As the only other public experiences platform, TUI moved a third more bookings in its last quarter. Still, it reports low single-digit EBITDA growth.

The market is fiercely competitive among the big players at the top of the funnel. And expensive. This means the travel industry will continue to weigh whether experiences are a viable path to