The Battle Over Tours and Activities Reservation Systems Rages On
Photo Credit: A view of a sightseeing tour to see the aurora borealis. Tour operators are in the market for reservation booking systems, which is undergoing a price war. Visualhunt
Skift Take
FareHarbor and Bokun act as if they're unstoppably on the way to becoming giants. But the market for booking systems for sightseeing and experience operators remains very much in flux.
One of the toughest decisions facing operators in the sightseeing and experiences sector is which reservation and distribution system to use. So the biggest software providers are competing aggressively on price to woo them.
Since early 2018, when TripAdvisor bought one system, Bokun, and Booking Holdings bought another system, FareHarbor, the two brands have ramped up marketing campaigns while also pushing discounts.
The systems providers believe that the sector will coalesce around a handful of players. They want to be among the winners who grab the most share.
The world has dozens and dozens of reservations systems, which fall into a few buckets. Maybe a hundred or so are essentially mom-and-pop software businesses, with basic functionality often targeted for a specific product, such as, say, heli-sking.
Another set of systems have taken venture capital money to grow faster. Peek has taken at least $39 million. BookingKit has raised tens of millions of undisclosed fundin
