Tours and Activities Site GetYourGuide Raises $25 Million in Series B

Tours booking site GetYourGuide announced today that it had raised a $25 million Series B round, capping off a week of multi-million dollar interest in the crowded tours and activities market.

Last week, sector pioneer Viator sold to TripAdvisor for $200 million.

GetYourGuide raised $4.5 million in January of this year. Spark Capital and Highland Capital Partners Europe led that round and are leading Series B as well.

GetYourGuide’s total funding to date is $45.5 million, making it one of the most heavily funded tours and activities startups in history, if not the most heavily funded.

Viator, which is in the process of being acquired by TripAdvisor, was also heavily funded, but has been coy about disclosing its total funding.

“As a Series A investor we have been fortunate to work closely with GetYourGuide,” said Spark Capital General Partner Alex Finkelstein in a statement. “We’ve been extremely impressed with their growth curve over the last year, and we have decided to double down our investment with another $25 million.”

Observers believe GetYourGuide is in play. TripAdvisor, which acquired Viator, has partnerships with both GetYourGuide and Viator, and both assuredly were subject to vetting by potential acquirers especially as TripAdvisor CEO Stephen Kaufer revealed to Skift last year that TripAdvisor wants to be at the forefront of accommodating travelers during all phases of the travel cycle, including in-destination.

Now that the TripAdvisor window has closed, GetYourGuide could be attractive to companies such as Expedia, which has clumsily toyed with tours and activities for more than a decade, as well as Booking.com, and China’s Qunar, which has been making a huge tours and activities push on mobile.

Kees Koolen, the former Booking.com CEO, and Fritz Demopoulos, founder and former CEO of China search site Qunar, participated in the Series A and are members of the GetYourGuide board.

Special Report: Tours and Activities

• Why the Tours and Activities Market is More Hype Than the Next Big Thing
• Tours and Activities Market is Looking for a Big Star to Match Big Investments
• Investors Boycott Tours and Activities as Peer-to-Peer Shakeout Looms