Tours and activities tips

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.