Articles tagged “getyourguide”

Search engine optimization had a great run but we are way past it now. Instead the top dogs in digital marketing are Google itself and the largest and most skilled players that can pay for those clicks and convert the hell out of them.

Will it or won't it has been the big question about whether Expedia will get into tours and activities in a serious way. Yes it will, Expedia officials say, but the company is intent on growing the business organically without the distraction of an acquisition.

With GetYourGuide's latest funding, making it the most heavily funded startup in the annals of tours and activities, a potential acquisition price just got racheted up. With TripAdvisor's acquisition of Viator, the market indeed is a "land grab" now for global expansion.

Lots of activity in boardrooms for this sector over the last week. Now it just needs more activity on the consumer side.

TripAdvisor's acquisition of Viator suggests that a mobile becomes the defacto means of discovery there will be a burgeoning emphasis on in-destination bookings with real-time availability.

Mobile will be transformative to the tours and activities market if and when vacationers think nothing of picking up their mobile devices and see what tours are available in the next hour or so -- then booking them.

Tours and activities are indeed a huge potential market, but it is highly fragmented and still mostly offline. There is a substantial upside when the market catches up with the mobile revolution.

The global travel industry is going through a lot of disruption, and the biggest sectors include the sharing economy and ground transportation, as well as one large potential winner in the hotel booking sector.

Although a stretch, GetYourGuide has frequently likened its desire to ramp up and aggregate the most tours and activities it can for each destination to that of Booking.com. Along with the founder of Qunar, GetYourGuide now has a Booking.com veteran, its former CEO, on board to help in the tour and activities company's expansion efforts.

Having celebrity names as investors often means little if the underlying business isn't sound, however trendy it may appear.