Online Travel Agents (OTAs) act as online marketplaces where tour and activity suppliers from all over the world can list their services. OTAs then spend a lot of time and money aggregating services from all over the world and marketing their inventory to a global customer base.

The two main players in the industry are Viator and Get Your Guide. While OTAs have been growing slowly over the past few years, they still lag behind their counterparts in hospitality sector like booking.com.

Since writing this article, we have released a guide where you can compare Viator, Expedia, GetYourGuide, Airbnb Experiences, KLOOK and Civitatis - all in one place:

A little background on Viator and GetYourGuide

Viator is based in San Francisco and was bought by TripAdvisor back in 2014. Since then, they've moved away pre-screening and curating the operators they work with, to opening up their platform to allow more companies to sell on Viator. This would benefit more operators since TripAdvisor was able to drive traffic and volume to Viator, giving operators more bookings than before.

Viator recently rolled out a platform for travel agents to book from 100,000 trips from more than 2,400 destinations and earn an 8% commission for each booking.

The company has 10 local-language sites and more than 3,000 affiliates sites worldwide, partnering with big players like Air France, InterContinental Hotels Group and Priceline.

GetYourGuide provides over 30,000 tours and activities in over 2,500 destinations across more than 110 countries. Based in Berlin, GetYourGuide claims to find the most relevant and personalised trips for its users. In 2015, the company secured a whopping $50 million in funding, a sum unheard of before in the sector, to grow its operations. An additional $75 million in funding was secured in 2017 to further expand its operations internationally. 

In 2017, the company secured partnerships with airlines EasyJet and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, allowing customers to book tours and activities after booking their flights via their websites or mobile apps. Other prominent partners include Emirates, Hotels.com, hotel.info, airberlin holidays, Opodo, Thomas Cook and Lufthansa Holidays.

Viator and GetYourGuide are established online and partner with top players in the industry, getting your products in front of a larger audience

Viator has a network of 390 million monthly travel planners (including TripAdvisor visitors) and 3,500 global affiliate partner websites including major online travel agencies, airlines, and hotel groups. Viator has their website available in 13 languages which attract a global audience. Apart from this Viator also runs its global advertising program on Google, Bing, Yahoo and Facebook.

TripAdvisor’s acquisition of Viator gives it a strong advantage in terms of eyeballs and what is known as referral traffic. Prior to the acquisition both GetYourGuide and Viator had “book now” buttons on their suppliers’ TripAdvisor listings that redirected browsers to the relevant Viator or GetYourGuide page. This was removed for GetYourGuide after the acquisition.

Viator works with over 175,000 travel agents and has a network of suppliers from around the world, offering greater visibility and reach among millions of customers. On their platform for travel agents, suppliers with real-time bookability stand a chance to gain a lot more bookings than ever before due to the sheer volume of visitors Viator is able to attract to their site.

Similarly, GetYourGuide promises more sales and bookings for its suppliers. They have their network on online platforms, partner websites, GetYourGuide mobile apps and other distribution channels that increase the exposure of suppliers’ products to get them more sales. Through white label solutions, widgets, links, banners, XML-integrations, pre-trip email integrations, and many other methods, GetYourGuide's partners promote its inventory to increase sales.

Their partnerships with large airlines have also highlighted GetYourGuide's use of technology to streamline the booking process, offering customers the option to go paperless when booking and paying for their trips.

Read more: 10 tips to make more money with OTAs

Success online depends on web traffic, so here are some stats

In terms of traffic, Viator still leads the pack. It's ranked in the top 10,000 websites in the world for web traffic, with an estimated 9m visits per month. GetYourGuide, on the other hand, follows behind with 5m visits per month. Their website has grown substantially in the last two years.

Viator’s traffic is skewed towards the US, which makes up 34% of its traffic. Other popular countries include the UK with 6%, Canada with 5%, Australia with 4% and Brazil making up 4%. 

GetYourGuide also generates most of its traffic from the US with 18%, followed by the UK representing 8%, 5% from Indonesia, 4% from India and 4% from Germany.

Get updated traffic stats on Viator here, and on GetYourGuide here.

Disadvantages?

Commission charges

Beyond the high traffic volume these OTAs manage to attract, there are downsides to working with OTAs too.

Firstly, there is a substantial commission involved, particularly if you rely on OTAs for a majority of your bookings. While it's free to sign up, both companies charge a commission when a sale.

Viator has a standard commission rate of 20% the advertised price. In addition, you’re required to provide them with the lowest price possible because they don’t want you undercutting them on your website.

GetYourGuide isn’t as clear-cut and sets a commission rate based on the supplier's destination and type of activities offered. The commission rate includes all booking costs, from credit card fees to bank transactions and promotion of your trips through its distribution partners. In addition, you're also provided customer support, marketing strategies, content optimisation and translation services for free. Your account manager will be the one setting the commission rate, which can range between 20% to 30%, with higher volume suppliers receiving lower commission rates.

Read more: How much commission should you pay for distribution?

Cancellation policies

Secondly, the cancellation policies guaranteed by OTAs can put operators in a tough spot. With Viator, customers who cancel at least 7 days in advance will receive 100% refund. If they cancel 3 and 6 days beforehand, a refund of 50% is expected.

With GetYourGuide, customers can cancel up to 24 hours before the scheduled departure time to receive a full refund. This can be tricky for operators to anticipate demand and sales they can make in a month.

Competition

When comparing both Viator and GetYourGuide, Sean O'Neil from Skift reports that while "Viator’s booking numbers have climbed since (TripAdvisor's) acquisition, (but) the growth of the product offering has (since) stalled." The same article reports that Andrew Middleton, head of ancillary revenue for the budget airline EasyJet, picked GetYourGuide because they have “the most comprehensive range of tours and activities to suit everyone – from traditional or alternative sightseeing tours, to adventure activities and attraction passes.”

For operators, this could be an indicator that Viator has become saturated with the same tours and activities from the same popular destinations. Unless you have an interesting product or service that sets you apart from your competitors, it might be difficult to fight through all the competition on the platform.

Read more: Interview with Ken Frohling, Vice President of Business Development at Viator

How to sign up with Viator and GetYourGuide

In both cases, sign up is free.

To sign up for Viator, visit their Supplier Sign-up page. After clicking on the sign-up button, an application form will appear after which you’ll be presented with an agreement. When a supplier accepts the agreement, you’ll receive a login ID and a password for Viator's extranet. This is the home account for the suppliers. They can add, edit products, see bookings, manage customers and do a lot more through this platform.

To sign up with GetYourGuide, head over to their Supplier Administration page. Here suppliers register by filling out a form asking for their contact details. You’ll then get an email to complete the registration by clicking on the link and also agreeing to the terms and conditions of the company. After this, your account is ready for use.

For TrekkSoft customers, the entire reselling and management process is simplified by enabling back-end connections between TrekkSoft and the OTA of your choice. Every time a customer books from the OTA, TrekkSoft will automatically update the number of available spaces for that trip across all your sales channels.

On top of that, every time a customer books from the OTA, TrekkSoft will automatically update the number of available spaces for that trip across all your sales channels.

Read more: 3 ways to effectively manage your distribution channels 

Compare Viator (TripAdvisor Experiences), Expedia Local Expert,            GetYourGuide, Airbnb Experiences, KLOOK and Civitatis -       all in one place: