Articles tagged “fareharbor”

Peek CEO Ruzwana Bashir isn’t looking for an exit and instead says she wants to be the biggest independent company providing operating systems for tours and expenses businesses.

There are an estimated 200 reservation technology providers available in the tours and activities sector. Whether consolidation amongst key platforms will bring meaningful benefits for tour operators remains to be seen.

FareHarbor, the Booking Holdings' tours and activities reservations tech platform, has a new CEO, Skift has learned.

When it comes to out-performing the online travel industry in terms of a post-Covid booking recovery, eDreams Odigeo can claim a top prize. It is plowing revenue back into discounts to make its subscriptions a no-brainer.

Ted Clements, FareHarbor's acting CEO who served as chief operating officer for the last three years, will step down from these positions in September, Skift has learned.

Eventually, Google's new Tickets feature may turn out to be one of the most important developments in a long time for the tours and activities sector. Google will certainly move to monetize the feature with paid ads, and it will ultimately expand to tours, and other products, too.

Booking.com faces tough-going in U.S. short-term rentals. Its business model has hosts perceiving they pay lower commissions to Airbnb, and the latter is has a big brand advantage. At the same time, Booking.com needs to defend Airbnb incursions on its own European turf.

After missteps in thinking it could grow its own attractions business and catch larger competitors, Booking.com's relaunch is the next stage in its evolution. The tours and activities sector is a lot more competitive now than it was even two years ago when Booking acquired FareHarbor. Hence, the need to reboot.

TUI/Musement's new strategic partnership with Booking.com has the potential to reshuffle the powers that be in tours and activities, especially in Europe. But TUI doesn't have a stellar track record in online offerings, and much of the promise will depend on its execution.

Whether building tours and activities or vacation rentals, acquiring companies soon find out that this stuff isn't as easy as it looked. From confidential internal documents obtained by Skift, it's clear Booking.com found out that scaling experiences on its own wouldn't be a cakewalk, and it's turning to Musement to kick off a preferred partnership strategy instead.