GetYourGuide has recently surpassed 200 million tickets sold. Co-Founder & COO Tao Tao sits down with Tourpreneur's Mitch Bach, Peter Syme and Chris Torres to talk about the challenges and surprises of 16 years of scaling an online experiences marketplace.
As always, we focus on takeaways for tour operators as Tao Tao shares data and insights. We examine the tensions inherent in balancing the needs of both suppliers and travelers, especially when it comes to curation—and Tao Tao shares news of new steps they're taking to curate their tour offerings and ensure quality.
We covered a lot in a one-hour conversation:
- what he's seen as changing customer behavior and how this impacts operators
- what kinds of tours GetYourGuide is really looking for, and what sells wel
- how to handle late booking windows, and how customers are discovering tours much earlier in the customer journey
- thorny supplier issues like commissions, late bookings, cancellation cut-off times, and more
- how to balance customers' evolving needs with the needs of suppliers
- why there is polarization in the industry regarding the opinion of OTAs
- how an experience marketplace is different than other travel OTAs
- how a brand like GetYourGuide can inspire customer loyalty
- pricing: how do you create a marketplace that doesn't just compete on price
- how to make sure you have enough tours to serve a variety of customers, but enough curation to ensure quality
- thoughts on how AI is and will be used behind the scenes and in front of customers in the future to discover and experience travel
- multi-day travel: is it a future avenue they're thinking about?
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