Articles tagged “tours and activities”

Google already had Google Maps when it added Google Flights in 2011 and later hotel metasearch and booking. With the launches of a destinations app, which pairs flight and hotel bookings, in 2015, and now the Google Trips app for organizing reservations and making tours and activities recommendations, Google's travel business is slowly, if steadily, becoming pervasive. Google can afford to bide its time -- it is, after all, Google.

Airbnb certainly didn't acquire Trip4real for its user base, which is small, but the move highlights Airbnb's intent to enhance the experiences of guests by giving them opportunity to hook up with local guides especially as hosts get more corporate. In addition, Barcelona authorities have taken a tough stance against Airbnb and having local ties through acquisition could engender a degree of goodwill.

TripAdvisor wants to be the go-to place for consumers to find in-destination activities on their smartphones. Citymaps will not only help consumers with map-based attractions' searches but will bolster TripAdvisor's abilities to perform location-based marketing. Expect more of those TripAdvisor notifications when you amble by an interesting tourist spot.

TripAdvisor took a beating in the second quarter, but its growing tours and activities sector is showing strength as the company tries to become all things to all travelers.

Peek boasts that it provides a great booking experience on both desktop and mobile devices, which at this stage in the game is a must if tours and activities platforms hope to keep pace with consumer demands and behavior.

If hospitality is what travel businesses are built on, how hospitable do the front line employees feel about their work? In this new series we reveal just that.

Adventure.com gambled on charging a 20 percent fee to guides, which was considerably higher than the going rate. Unanswered is whether the peer to peer concept in tours and activities really is viable on a large-scale basis.

Zerve investors obviously determined that any acquisition offers that emerged weren't in their best interests but at least now it's certain that there was at least one concrete buyout offer, if not others, out there.

It is a war zone in tours and activities this week as all of the platform players are scrambling to pick up the pieces of Zerve.

Don't miss the forest for the trees: TripAdvisor is evolving into a well-rounded travel planning AND booking site. If hotel bookings on TripAdvisor eventually fall short of expectations it would be a big blow, but then tours and activities, restaurant reservations, vacation rentals, hotel metasearch and reviews can all play a role in taking up some of the slack.