Booking.com’s Challenges With Tours and Activities Lead to Musement Partnership
Skift Take
Whether building tours and activities or vacation rentals, acquiring companies soon find out that this stuff isn't as easy as it looked. From confidential internal documents obtained by Skift, it's clear Booking.com found out that scaling experiences on its own wouldn't be a cakewalk, and it's turning to Musement to kick off a preferred partnership strategy instead.
Booking.com laid off as many as 40 employees in its attractions unit a couple of months ago, and is on the cusp of finalizing a preferred partnership with TUI Group's Musement, Skift has learned exclusively. The move marks a strategy reversal that shows Bookings' challenges in expanding tours and activities to build its often-touted connected trip.
In one potentially controversial aspect of the Musement deal, which is believed to be all but signed but not yet announced, the Milan, Italy-based online tours and activities aggregator would contract directly with Booking.com's FareHarbor booking software solution. It would also share customer leads, according to sources close to parent company Booking Holdings.
Some tours and activities operators and online sellers take a dim view of tour sellers having to share leads with booking engines and online travel agencies, whether it be Booking.com or Tripadvisor and its Bokun unit because operators use multiple booking engines for distribu
