GetYourGuide Gets a Tours Booking Boost With EasyJet Deal

Tours booking platform GetYourGuide said Tuesday it will begin selling up to 16,000 activities in Europe as an add-on option along with airfares on the website and app of EasyJet, the UK-based low-cost airline.

EasyJet stands out for being the rare large carrier to promote the sale of tours on an equal footing with hotels and rental cars after a consumer has booked a flight.

The tours offering also gives EasyJet another reason to encourage customers to use its mobile app beyond a flight. Travelers will likely check back to the app to confirm details about their tours reservation when at their destination. GetYourGuide says that most of the tours have paperless tickets, allowing mobile users to scan a QR code for entry.

Of note, too, is that EasyJet used to partner with Viator, with a white-label site that is still up but not active.

A bit of history is in order: GetYourGuide was the first tours aggregator to power TripAdvisor’s offering back in 2011. TripAdvisor added Viator and Expedia a couple of years later, and eventually acquired Viator, in a deal completed in 2014.

Today, Viator is the top digital player in tours and activities, as our Skift Research Reports service noted in the State of Tours and Activities Tech 2017.

Viator’s booking numbers have climbed since the acquisition, but the growth of the product offering has stalled. Critics blame the issue on management changes and the top TripAdvisor leadership’s distraction with troubles in the company’s planned switch from a hotel metasearch to a hotel instant booking business model.

Andrew Middleton, head of ancillary revenue for EasyJet, explained that the budget airline had picked GetYourGuide because it has “the most comprehensive range of tours and activities to suit everyone – from traditional or alternative sightseeing tours, to adventure activities and attraction passes.”

The benefit for GetYourGuide is to get access to a platform that already has users who are already traveling to destinations. As the costs of digital marketing have risen, the Berlin-based tour company has found the cost of acquiring new consumers to be rising, too. The EasyJet platform may offer a cheaper path.

GetYourGuide has raised more than $95 million in funding. It continues to expand, as seen by the dozens of job advertisements it has posted. In April, GetYourGuide‘s co-founder and COO Tao Tao told the Skift Forum Europe audience that the company is continuing to grow.