The Brief is read daily by almost 1000 tour operators and tour professionals. Below you can read the top 10 news articles that our readers clicked on in 2019.
1 Tripadvisor Experiences announce new features and product updates for tour and activity partners.
2 Suppliers, beware: A threat lurks in tours and activities distribution.
GetYourGuide‘s COO, Tao Tao issued a warning to the industry over OTAs owning tour booking systems, following the acquisition of Bokun by Tripadvisor and FareHarbor by Booking Holdings. This one generated a lot of debate on a podcast round table with Peter Syme and Alex Bainbridge (listen here if you missed it.)
Available on all good podcast apps and at Tourpreneur.
3 Booking.com Notifies Operators of Experiences Re-org.
In a shock move, Booking pulled out of the Experiences sector..for now. Our friends at Arival broke the news. Arival also got the scoop on the Airbnb investment into Dutch OTA Tiqets. I doff my hat to Jenna Blumenfeld and the Arival team.
4 Consolidation to come in technology for tours and activities.
Douglas Quinby, CEO of Arival opines on the state of play for the 160+ booking platform/res tech companies.
5 A feisty tweet from Skift’s veteran travel industry journalist Dennis Schaal sparked an interesting debate during Arival Orlando. Grab a bag of popcorn for this one.
‘Sorry but I don’t see why tours and activities is ‘the best part of travel.’ It’s great but so is lots of the rest of travel. And, mirror, mirror on the wall, is Experiences the hottest sector? You can certainly make the argument that short-term rentals is hot, hot, hotter.
6 Airbnb to Shuffle the Leadership of Experiences Business at Critical Juncture.
Skift’s Dennis Schaal broke the news of a leadership change at Airbnb Experiences.
‘Joe Zadeh, an early Airbnb employee who has been running the Experiences business since it debuted three years ago, will relinquish the post pending the appointment of a successor.’
“I believe that people do business with other people. They don’t do business with other businesses. So when they come and speak to us and I, going back to honesty, I try to say, no, I can’t manage 4,000 of your staff members coming and volunteering and no, we don’t need another webinar on doing this because we don’t have the capacity to implement it. But what we need is a couple of people coming on half a day to support us with that.” She advises anyone who is trying to engage with another company to give clear direction. “It’s a lot easier for them to say, yep, okay, I’ll do this. No problem.” Make sure to have a specific ask which fills an immediate need when approaching a company and be focused on what you want for the next step of your business.
7 The Battle Over Tours and Activities Reservation Systems Rages On.
Skift‘s Sean O’Neill covers the Res Tech debate at Arival Orlando. (Arival has made it available to view here.) More popcorn needed.
8 A tale of two startups – a booming tours and activities sector has a dark side.
Big money was pumped into Klook and GetYourGuide in 2020. Phocuswire‘s Kevin May contrasts that news with two tour and activities startups that struggled to gain traction.
9 Google Turns on Reserve For Tripadvisor – Where’s the Effing Off Button?
Digital Marketing expert Mike Blumenthal vents his frustration at Google.
10 The 5 Revenue-Generating Secrets of Top Tours and Attractions By Redeam
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Shane Whaley is the Host and Producer of the Tourpreneur Podcast