Expedia Group is one of the biggest global travel industry brands, operating 60+ booking sites — including Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo — across 30+ countries and 17 languages. That network attracts around 60 million monthly shoppers who are actively in buying mode — researching flights, hotels, car rentals, and things to do, all in one place.

For tour operators, Expedia presents a super valuable opportunity to get your experiences in front of these travellers. Unlike activity-only OTAs, where travellers arrive specifically looking for things to do, Expedia captures travellers earlier in the planning process — when they’re booking their whole trip. Your tours and activities show up right alongside their travel bookings, putting your experiences in front of people who might not have even known to search for them.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to apply as an Expedia supplier, what the fees look like, and how to make the most of the platform once you’re listed. We’ll also discuss how Bókun connects with Expedia to keep everything running smoothly behind the scenes.

Applying as an Expedia Local Expert

Requirements for selling on Expedia

Before you fill out the application, it’s worth making sure your business is actually ready for the partnership. Expedia looks for:

  • Proper licensing, insurance, and legal operation as a travel business. You’ll need general liability coverage at a minimum; if motor vehicles are part of your tours, you’ll also need commercial auto liability.
  • Established operations with a proven track record — this isn’t the platform for a brand-new operator with no reviews.
  • The ability to honour every booking made through the platform and handle cancellations according to Expedia’s policy.
  • Real-time availability management. If your calendar isn’t up to date, you’ll run into double bookings, which Expedia takes seriously.
  • Fast response times for booking confirmations and guest inquiries.
  • Accurate listings — your descriptions and photos need to genuinely reflect the experience guests will have.

Expedia supplier application

Head to the Expedia.com Activities Partner page and fill out the application form. It only takes a few minutes.

Expedia Group: Contact us to list with Expedia Group - Submit the form and a member of our team will review your application.

Once submitted, an Expedia rep will typically follow up within 3 to 5 business days to confirm your status and walk you through the next steps.

After you’re approved, you’ll get access to Partner Central — Expedia’s supplier management tool — where you’ll build your listings, set your availability, and manage pricing.

What tours & activities can you sell on Expedia?

Expedia supports a broad range of travel experiences — city tours, outdoor adventures, cultural experiences, historical walking tours, ghost tours, wildlife safaris, food tours, wine tastings, cooking classes, boat tours, snorkelling and diving excursions, kayaking and paddleboarding, surf lessons, attraction tickets, and more.

If it’s something travellers would be interested in doing on a trip, it likely has a home here.

Both single-day activities and multi-day experiences are supported.

As mentioned above, what really sets Expedia apart from activity-only OTAs is where your listings show up. Rather than appearing on a platform where travellers are specifically hunting for travel experiences, your activities surface in the “Things to Do” section while someone is booking other parts of their travel — often before they’ve even thought about what to do once they get to their destination. That positioning is hard to replicate anywhere else in OTA distribution.

Fees to sell on Expedia

There are no charges — no listing fees, no monthly subscriptions — to sell on Expedia. It’s a commission-based model where you provide your net rate (a.k.a., your best price), and then Expedia marks it up on the retail side and keeps the difference when a booking comes in.

Commission rates typically range from 15% to 30%, though some operators report rates up to 35% for certain activity types. Your final rate is negotiated directly with a Destination Manager once you’re approved, so you do have some say here.

Before that conversation, it’s worth doing a bit of homework. Know what competitors in your area are charging for similar experiences, think through the lowest net rate you can offer and still make the experience worth running, and consider how Expedia’s markup will affect the price customers actually see — you want that final number to stay competitive with what they’d find on your other channels.

It’s worth noting here: Expedia collects payment from travellers at the time of booking and handles all payment processing. Then they pay you out on a monthly basis (no invoicing required). While some tour operators feel like monthly payments are too infrequent, the perk is that Expedia covers credit card or transaction fees from bookings, so you don’t have to deal with them.

Best practices for selling on Expedia

  • Write titles and descriptions that do the selling for you. Travellers on Expedia are comparing a lot of options at once. Your listings need to quickly communicate what makes your experience worth booking — not just what it is, but what makes it unique. Lead with the moment that makes your tour memorable.
  • Fill your listings with attention-grabbing media. Since your activities sit alongside tons of travel listings, high-quality imagery is what sets you apart. Skip the stock photos. Show real guests having a real experience. Expedia rewards listings that look professional and genuine.
  • Keep your pricing competitive. Expedia gives partners access to market intelligence tools and competitor data — use them to do that homework we discussed above and ensure your pricing makes sense (for your business and customers).
  • Use seasonal pricing. Expedia’s tools let you adjust rates by season or demand period. If you’re not varying pricing across peak and off-peak times, you’re likely leaving money on the table during busy periods and missing bookings during slow ones.
  • Run promotions during slow periods. Expedia lets you create custom promotions — including Members Only deals for One Key members — to boost visibility during low-demand periods. It’s a straightforward way to fill gaps in your calendar without permanently adjusting your pricing.
  • Set up your availability calendar carefully. Real-time availability sync is non-negotiable here. Any gaps between your Expedia calendar and your actual schedule can cause double bookings and cancellations. Over time this hurts your visibility on the platform. This is where Bókun is a major help.
  • Maximise your availability window. The more dates you have listed, the more visibility your product gets on the platform. International travellers in particular tend to book well in advance, so loading your availability months out — not just the next few weeks — puts you in front of that audience before they book elsewhere. Since Expedia also caters to a lot of last-minute bookers, keeping a short minimum booking window captures that end of the market as well.
  • Stay on top of your reviews. Expedia surfaces higher-rated experiences more prominently. Responding professionally to all reviews — including critical ones — signals to both the algorithm and future guests that you run a tight operation.

Benefits of selling on Expedia

  • You’re in the room when travellers are booking their whole trip. After a traveller books a flight and hotel package on Expedia, they’re automatically prompted to browse activities in that destination — putting your experiences in front of someone who’s already committed to the trip and looking to fill their itinerary. You don’t have to do anything to make this happen; it’s just how the platform works.
  • Expedia travellers spend more. According to Expedia Group’s own research, its travellers spend 37% more on in-destination activities vs. travellers from other platforms. They’re not bargain hunters — they’re people who’ve already committed to a trip and are willing to spend on experiences. That’s a meaningfully different audience than you’d find on some other OTAs.
  • The network effect is real. When you list on Expedia, you’re not just on Expedia — you’re on Hotels.com, Vrbo, Travelocity, Orbitz, ebookers, and a handful of other Expedia Group sites simultaneously, all without additional effort on your end. As mentioned above, these sites cumulatively see 60 million (plus) monthly visitors, opening your experiences to absolutely massive audiences.
  • Access to a massive B2B reseller network. Beyond Expedia’s direct consumer traffic, your experiences are also visible to Expedia’s network of 70k+ B2B partners — travel agents, airlines, corporate travel companies, and affiliates — who can find and resell them to their own customers.
  • One Key works in your favour. One Key is Expedia Group’s loyalty program, with over 168 million members across the U.S. and growing globally. Members earn OneKeyCash on every part of their trip — including activity bookings — and can redeem it toward future travel. Activity tickets count as trip elements that help members level up their status, providing an extra incentive to add experiences to their booking. Expedia Group funds the rewards cost, so it doesn’t hit your margins. You get the boost in booking appeal without subsidising it yourself.
  • Marketing at scale — that you couldn’t afford alone. Expedia Group spends billions annually on marketing across basically every channel you can think of: TV commercials, paid search, social media advertising, email campaigns, and content marketing — all designed to keep its sites ranking at the top of travel searches and front of mind for travellers planning their next trip. As a supplier, you’re riding that entire investment for the cost of a commission.
  • Sponsored listings for extra visibility. If you want to push a particular experience — a new product launch or a seasonal offering — Expedia offers paid advertising placements to put your listing in front of more shoppers.
  • Expedia automatically requests reviews from guests. After every completed booking, Expedia sends guests a review request on your behalf. More reviews = better visibility on the platform and more social proof for future bookers.

Expedia <> Bókun Connection

Bókun has a seamless integration with Expedia, so your Expedia listings and Bókun stay completely in sync.

When a traveller books one of your experiences on Expedia, it shows up instantly in Bókun — and Bókun sends real-time availability and inventory back over to Expedia to keep your calendar current. This prevents overbookings and cancellations that can knock your visibility on Expedia. There’s absolutely no manual calendar management on your end.

And our Expedia integration is really just the tip of the distribution iceberg. Bókun is packed with tools to get your tours and activities in front of new audiences.

  • We connect with 70+ global online travel agencies and are the #1 restech partner for all major OTAs. In addition to Expedia, you can sell tours on Viator, GetYourGuide, Civitatis, Airbnb, Tiqets, Headout, Hotelbeds, TourRadar, Trip.com, Google Things to do, and more. These integrations work the same as our Expedia connection, so you can promote your experiences across a variety of channels and use Bókun to automate booking management tasks.

As a Tripadvisor brand, we also offer some unique perks and partnerships to help you see more success from your online distribution strategies. For example, we’re…

  • A Viator Preferred Partner, so we waive Bókun booking fees on Viator reservations and offer free yearly subscription checks.
  • Our in-built distribution network — Marketplace — is home to thousands of travel industry partners, including accommodation providers like hotels and resorts, DMCs, travel agents, rental companies, transportation services, attractions, educational institutions, and other travel experience providers like yourself. You can use this partner network to work with other businesses. Win new bookings from resellers. Earn commissions by reselling others’ services. Or create packages with partners.
  • Referral Tracking lets you take things a step further and expand partnerships beyond our Marketplace. Create an affiliate network with anybody you choose — your favourite social media influencers, travel bloggers, local interest groups, tourism boards, or other businesses in your area. Get as creative as you like here. Our system gives you the flexibility to fully control partnership terms, allowing you to set contracts and commission rates for each partner. And our trackable booking links let you see who wins you the most business, so you can keep fine-tuning this network.

All these features are available in both our complete tour operator software and our dedicated Channel Manager, so all Bókun users have the tools to maximise their online reach.

Operators who’ve leaned into multi-channel distribution through Bókun have seen serious results. Check out their success stories below:

Getting started

Expedia puts your experiences in front of millions of monthly shoppers who are actively planning and booking trips, so they can effortlessly browse all kinds of things to do and fill their days. This gives you an excellent opportunity to win new bookings.

And while Expedia is a great place to start, the operators seeing the biggest revenue growth aren’t stopping at one OTA — they’re building a network of channels that work for them around the clock.

That’s where Bókun comes in. With some of the most impressive growth drivers in the industry, access to hundreds of online distribution channels, and exclusive partnerships with major OTAs, we’re a no-brainer for operators looking to go all-in on online sales.

You can explore our full platform and learn more about Bókun by starting a 14-day free trial — no credit card required! Or, those interested in our Channel Manager can schedule a free demo.

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