Articles tagged “tours and activities”

The big boys and girls, namely Expedia and TripAdvisor, are at the beginning of the beginning in making the online and mobile booking of tours and activities an everyday thing. Now they just need consumers to join the party.

It's not just hosts who are riding Airbnb's coattails and creating businesses. Small tour operators are working with hosts to draw attention to their activities and Airbnb is quick to help them do that to give it a neighborhood-friendly image.

Expedia is finally poised -- and its technology investments confirm it -- to give TripAdvisor's Viator a run for its money in tours and activities. It's an uphill climb but with mobile coming into its own, the decision is a no-brainer.

Restaurants, attractions and vacation rentals are just 12 percent of TripAdvisor's revenue but that number is going to get a lot bigger in the future.

Many people have worked hard for a long time to bring tours and activities into the digital age. So far, there's very, very little to show for all the work and all the hype.

Yelp's adding tours and activities' bookings highlights the mainstreaming of the sector but the way Yelp is doing this is modest and not a game-changer. Yelp hasn't acquired a tours and activities provider and isn't putting a lot of resources into in-app bookings, both of which rival TripAdvisor has done.

When it comes to TripAdvisor's Business Listings, product development, engineering and sales and marketing, the buck, euro and renminbi stop with CEO Stephen Kaufer. But as the importance of vacation rentals and tours and activities have grown, Kaufer has delegated meaningful power to others. At least on paper.

Booking.com and now TripAdvisor are getting deeper into the B2B side of the hotel business. That leaves Expedia as the holdout that so far is maintaining its focus on hotel distribution and is sticking to its proverbial knitting.

The tours and activity sector has been one of the last within the travel industry to innovate; however, small changes are being made which could lead to necessary shifts in the next one to three years.

Like many industries, new digital tools are breaking down the barriers to entry for tour operators, creating a new breed of companies that explore destinations and attractions in more engaging and memorable formats.