Tours and activities tips

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Monday fired another shot in his battle with Walt Disney Co, saying the state’s Republican legislature would take steps to nullify the company’s effort to circumvent state oversight of Walt Disney World.

Airbnb’s pause in onboarding new experiences has raised questions about its long-term strategy.

There are plenty of walking tours to Lower Manhattan. From Ground Zero Memorial Walking tours to Wall Street and Financial District tours, there’s a broad selection to book among online travel marketplaces like Viator and GetYourGuide. 

TUI Musement continues to carve its place in the growth flywheel of parent company TUI Group, with the launch of its digital TUI experiences platforms to take the brand beyond Europe and into the world.

Tours and activities platform GetYourGuide’s closing of $194 million in equity and credit financing pushes the travel startup’s total investment over the $1 billion threshold, and solidifies its lead as the most heavily-funded company in the experiences sector.   

GetYourGuide is betting on sports experiences as the next wave in tours and activities. The online experiences platform launched its new sports category Monday with a branded Originals tour to experience the home of Formula 1 legend, McLaren Racing. 

Tea leaf-picking near Tokyo with views of Japan’s Mount Fuji, exploring breadfruit and banana plantations on Cook Islands in the South Pacific, or harvesting grapes in the Douro Valley in Portugal – annual harvests hold a seasonal promise for travelers who want to connect with their destination through a different, sensory experience.

Thailand’s economy in May improved from the previous month as tourism gathered momentum and private consumption increased while exports remained weak, the central bank said on Friday.

It’s not exactly budget travel, but at least one tour operator is seeing a pullback in what high-net-worth households are looking to spend.

Tripadvisor and its Viator tours and activities brand compete against amply funded and privately held GetYourGuide as the largest players in this sector. So it was intriguing when the Tripadvisor’s CEO said at a recent investor conference that his experiences business “is larger and faster growing.”

Safety and sustainability appear to be key elements shaping the business of adventure travel for members who responded to the 2023 Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA) Industry Snapshot Survey. 

The UK-based fintech app Revolut, which claims 30 million users, has added a in-app experiences marketplace, in partnership with Tripadvisor’s Viator.

Disney has reached a preliminary settlement in a lawsuit over alleged deceptive practices tied to its Magic Key program. 

The market for tours, activities, and experiences represents one of the most opportunistic and untapped prospects within the travel industry. It is highly fragmented, with a long tail of small suppliers, and it is rapidly shifting online. That makes it an attractive space for online intermediaries to consolidate market share from small offline players. 

Regiondo, Checkfront, and Rezdy – three prominent players in the tours and activities reservations tech sector – have joined forces. Skift first reported the intended merger.

In September 2021, Google launched an advertising product called Google Things To Do, which lists not only the top attractions in a city but also options to book tickets via direct sites or online travel agencies. As we show in the screenshot below, though Google displays paid sponsored listings near the top of the site, its main organic booking list prioritizes the direct website over the sites of aggregators such as Viator, GetYourGuide and Musement, to name a few. 

Tripadvisor reached an historic milestone: For the first time since acquiring Viator nearly a decade ago, revenue from this tours and activities brand in the second quarter surpassed that of what has traditionally been Tripadvisor’s foundational business, hotel metasearch.

TUI, one of Europe’s leading tour operator groups, has extended its tours and activities distribution through Juniper Travel Technology.

European-based experience gift platform Smartbox Group has acquired the Scandinavian experiences platform Truestory.