Skift Take
We said there would be more consolidation in the tours and activities space, and the ink was hardly dry when TripAdvisor announced the acquisition of Bokun. This enables TripAdvisor to provide an end-to-end solution without having to rely on third party vendors to bring tours and activities suppliers on board.
A day after Booking Holdings announced it was buying tours and activities tech provider FareHarbor, TripAdvisor answered the challenge as it announced that it, too, entered that connectivity space with the acquisition of Iceland's Bokun.
TripAdvisor did not reveal the terms of the deal, which closed in the last 24 hours. A spokeswoman said TripAdvisor plans to expand the roughly 20-member Bokun team.
Until now, TripAdvisor's Experiences unit relied on third party integrators such as FareHarbor, Peek, and Bokun, which has been working with TripAdvisor since 2016, to connect tour suppliers to its platform, but now it will be able to handle booking, inventory management and tour operations through its in-house tech company. Bokun, founded in 2012, has a dominant presence among tour companies in Iceland, and also has a customer base beyond the country, as well.
“As the industry leader, our opportunity in this space is enormous," said Dermot Halpin, president, TripAdvisor Experiences and Rentals, in a statement. "We’re committed to taking the experiences sector far beyond its current online penetration
