GetYourGuide’s Evolving Approach to Curating an Experience Marketplace (w/ Tao Tao, COO)
GetYourGuide has recently surpassed 200 million tickets sold. Co-Founder & COO Tao Tao sits down with Tourpreneur's Mitch Bach, Peter Syme and Chris Torres to talk about the challenges and surprises of 16 years of scaling an online experiences marketplace.As always, we focus on takeaways for tour operators as Tao Tao shares data and insights. We examine the tensions inherent in balancing the needs of both suppliers and travelers, especially when it comes to curation—and Tao Tao shares news of new steps they're taking to curate their tour offerings and ensure quality.We covered a lot in a one-hour conversation:what he's seen as changing customer behavior and how this impacts operatorswhat kinds of tours GetYourGuide is really looking for, and what sells welhow to handle late booking windows, and how customers are discovering tours much earlier in the customer journeythorny supplier issues like commissions, late bookings, cancellation cut-off times, and morehow to balance customers' evolving needs with the needs of supplierswhy there is polarization in the industry regarding the opinion of OTAshow an experience marketplace is different than other travel OTAshow a brand like GetYourGuide can inspire customer loyaltypricing: how do you create a marketplace that doesn't just compete on pricehow to make sure you have enough tours to serve a variety of customers, but enough curation to ensure qualitythoughts on how AI is and will be used behind the scenes and in front of customers in the future to discover and experience travelmulti-day travel: is it a future avenue they're thinking about?Upcoming Tourpreneur events:Feb 18-20, 2025: New York City - TourpreneurCONNECT, focused on scaling your operations, sales, and marketing strategiesMarch 3, 2025: Free Pre-ITB Tourpreneur Business Workshop at GetYourGuide HeadquartersView our whole global calendar of meetups and conferences