Online travel agencies (OTAs) are the sites travellers use to research new destinations and book vacation plans — think Viator, GetYourGuide, Expedia, Booking.com, Civitatis, Airbnb Experiences, and more.

These sites collectively reach hundreds of millions of travellers, offering excellent opportunities for tour operators to promote their experiences to audiences actively looking for things to do in new places. By showcasing their tours on these platforms, operators can attract bookings from travellers worldwide (who otherwise might never have found them).

If you’re interested in using OTAs to earn more tour bookings, this guide has you covered. We’ll review how OTAs work, the most popular platforms to join, and the best ways to manage OTA bookings when you’re selling across multiple sites.

OTA Bookings vs. Direct Bookings

OTA bookings are, as the name suggests, bookings you earn through OTAs. These are technically third-party bookings because travellers are booking your experiences through an OTA (vs. directly with you).

OTAs take a commission fee (between 15% to 30%) for any booking you earn through their site.

Direct channels include your own website, email, phone, social media, and in-person.

The only time there is a fee for direct bookings is when travellers reserve tours on your website, as online booking systems charge a small booking fee (between 1% and 8%, depending on your software provider).

How Do OTAs Work?

OTAs help travellers search for and book a range of travel services — flights, hotels, car rentals, restaurants, and, of course, tours and activities.

When travellers use OTAs to search for things to do in a destination, they see listings from tour operators like you. They can compare options, read reviews, check availability, and book directly through the platform.

For tour operators, the deal is simple: OTAs promote your tours to their massive audiences, and in exchange, they take a commission on every booking they generate for you. That’s how they make money — by connecting travellers with experiences and taking a cut of each sale.

Essentially, OTAs handle tour marketing, while you handle the actual tour experience.

Pros & Cons of OTA Bookings

OTAs can be a game-changer for tour operators, especially for smaller businesses still trying to gain traction and grow their customer base — but they’re not without potential trade-offs.

The Good

  • OTAs give you massive reach and improve discoverability, making it easy to access global audiences.
  • Being listed on OTAs — the sites travellers already trust to plan their getaways — builds your credibility and legitimacy. Plus, OTAs allow past travellers to leave reviews so new potential customers can see others’ experiences and feedback.
  • OTAs don’t charge fees for you to join their platforms, so there are no upfront costs; you only pay a commission when you earn a booking.
  • You can join as many OTAs as you wish — for example, GetYourGuide, with a strong presence in European markets; Civitatis, popular across Spanish-speaking markets; and Klook, predominant in Asia — and reach potential customers across the globe. You aren’t limited to one site or another.
  • OTAs give you the flexibility to experiment with pricing strategies. You can set different rates on different platforms to test what works best and maximise your revenue.
  • Most OTAs have affiliate programs so travel influencers can promote your tours to their audiences and earn bookings for you — giving you even more exposure.
  • You can capitalise on OTAs’ Billboard Effect: this is when travellers find you on OTAs (where you’re getting that advertising exposure), but instead of booking there, they navigate to your site to learn more about your brand and book directly. This lets you keep more revenue by avoiding the OTA commission.
  • You can earn more repeat customers (who typically book directly with you after their first experience with your brand).

The Drawbacks

  • You pay a (sometimes steep) commission for every booking you earn through OTAs. As explained above, direct bookings are free or much cheaper.
  • You don’t have any control over where you’re listed on OTAs. Some sites, like Viator, list experiences that have earned their Badge of Excellence above other results, but there’s really no telling where you’ll appear in the results. And your position can change from one search to the next.
  • You have less direct contact with travellers during the booking process when they’re planning their trips on OTAs. They might have trouble with the OTA itself, which can reflect poorly on your business.
  • Selling on OTAs can cause pricing pressure. Many customers are deal-oriented, so even if you offer a five-star experience, travellers may book with someone else simply because they charge lower rates. Tour operators can feel inclined to lower their prices just to stay competitive on OTAs.

While OTAs open your business to millions of travellers, create avenues to earn new bookings, and can be invaluable during a small business’s initial ramp-up period, you shouldn’t be totally reliant on them. Ideally, you should aim for a mix of OTA and direct bookings as you grow.

What Are the Best OTAs to Join?

  • Viator: The world’s largest OTA for tours and activities, with over 300,000 experiences across 2,500 destinations. Viator is owned by Tripadvisor, so when you list tours on Viator, they also appear on Tripadvisor’s site for additional promotion. Commission fees on both platforms are typically 20%, but can range from 20% to 25%.

Join Viator here.

Read more: How to sell tours on Viator

  • GetYourGuide (GYG): One of the most popular OTAs in Europe; it promotes over 140,000 tours and activities across 10,000+ cities, and supports 14 language options. Commission fees vary here between 20% and 30% (by location, activity type, and booking volume).

Join GetYourGuide here.

Read more: How to become a GetYourGuide supplier

  • Google Things to do: This is Google’s platform for showcasing tours and activities directly in Search, Maps, and Google Business Profiles. Google doesn’t charge anything for this visibility (though you can also run paid ads on a pay-per-click basis for even more exposure). When travellers find your tours in search, Google will direct them to your site to book directly.

You can apply for Google’s program here, or connect with Things to do through an approved connectivity partner (like Bókun!).

Read more: How to get listed on Google Things to do

  • Airbnb Experiences: Airbnb’s Experiences program lets travellers book unique, locally-inspired activities and cultural experiences, ranging from cooking classes and art workshops to outdoor adventures and food tours. Commission is a flat 20%.

Join Airbnb Experiences here.

Read more: How to host Experiences on Airbnb

  • Expedia Group: This platform puts your tours in front of travellers while they’re already booking flights and hotels. Your activities appear as “Things to Do” during their booking flow, making it easy for them to add experiences to their trip. Commission rates range from 15% to 30% but are negotiable.

Join Expedia’s program here.

  • Civitatis: This is a leading OTA in Spanish-speaking markets, with over 90,000 activities across 4,000+ destinations. The platform supports Spanish, English, French, Italian, and Portuguese, and is most popular in Spain and Latin America. Commission costs vary.

Join Civitatis here.

  • Klook: This platform is a go-to for operators targeting Asian travellers, as it’s particularly popular in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia. It features over 500,000 activities across 400+ destinations. Commission rates range from 15% to 25%.

Join Klook here.

  • Tiqets: This platform has a strong presence in Europe (specifically France, Spain, Italy, and Germany) and lets travellers book instant mobile tickets for museums, attractions, and cultural venues. Tiqets has a strategic partnership with Klook to cross-promote inventory. Commission typically ranges from 20% to 30%.

Join Tiqets here.

  • TourRadar: This platform specialises in multi-day tours and adventure travel, with over 50,000 tours including hiking expeditions, food tours, river cruises, and cultural journeys. This platform is great for operators offering longer, immersive experiences. Commission rates vary by operator and are negotiated individually.

Join TourRadar here.

  • Trip.com: This is a popular OTA across China and the Asia-Pacific region. It connects you with Asian travellers seeking international experiences and offers multilingual support. Commission rates typically range from 15% to 25%.

Join Trip.com here.

  • Headout: This mobile-first marketplace is built for travellers booking last-minute activities. The platform lists over 10,000 experiences, with an emphasis on instant confirmations and same-day availability. Commission rates are typically 15% to 25% but can be negotiated.

Join Headout here.

  • Hotelbeds: This option here is a bit unique in that it’s a B2B distribution platform, connecting tour operators with travel agents, tour wholesalers, and travel companies worldwide (vs. directly with consumers). This is a great platform for operators looking to expand into wholesale distribution channels. Commission typically ranges from 10% to 20%.

Join Hotelbeds here.

Read more: 10+ travel distribution channels for tour operators

How Do You Join OTAs?

Joining OTAs is pretty simple. Most platforms follow one of two approaches:

  1. You create an account, fill in your business details, and start building product listings right away. The OTA reviews and approves each tour or activity individually before publishing it on their site.
  1. Some OTAs review your business details and credentials after creating a profile before you gain access to their platform. Once approved, you can start adding products, which are then reviewed individually before going live.

Either way, the process is straightforward, and most OTAs walk you through the steps to join, so there is no guesswork.

We’ve linked to each OTA’s supplier enrolment page above, so you can easily get started with the platforms that make sense for your business.

How Do You Manage OTA Bookings?

Each OTA provides a dashboard to view bookings and manage your availability. If you’re only selling on one OTA, this works fine as your primary calendar.

This is also easy if you’re selling on your website and just one OTA. You can manage both calendars manually; you’ll just need to update availability in both places as bookings come in. It’s doable, but it requires some extra effort to keep everything in sync.

Once you start selling across multiple OTAs, though, manual management becomes impractical. That’s when you need a channel manager.

A channel manager pulls bookings from all your sales channels (your website and all OTAs) into a single master calendar and syncs real-time availability back to every connected platform.

For example, say someone books one of your tours on GetYourGuide. The reservation will automatically appear in your master calendar, and that calendar will send availability data back to Viator, Expedia, and everywhere else you’re listed, so the GYG reservation is accounted for across all sites.

This ensures customers see your most current availability no matter where they find you, preventing overbookings and saving you from manually updating each calendar every time you receive a reservation.

How Bókun Supports OTA Bookings

Bókun offers some of the most highly-rated restech systems for tour and activity providers. Here’s how:

  • Our all-in-one tour operator software is perfect for teams that need a solution to manage all areas of business. It includes website builders, online booking engine widgets, booking and availability management, product and resource management, dynamic pricing, OTA integrations, an in-built reseller network, affiliate support, CRM, customer check-in tools, business intelligence reporting, mobile apps, and other back-office tools.
  • Our Channel Manager is ideal for teams that already have a booking management system and need an intermediary to connect with OTAs, route all reservations to a master calendar, and automate availability updates. This solution gives you access to all of our OTA integrations and our complete reseller network (Marketplace).

Here’s why Bókun is the best choice for teams looking to explore online booking channels and maximise their distribution strategies:

  • Bókun connects with 50+ global OTAs, including all of the names mentioned above and countless others. We even connect with more niche-specific sites so you can find OTAs specifically tailored to your travel experiences or region, and get in front of more targeted audiences.
  • We’re a Tripadvisor brand with a vast network of resources to support your success. Bókun, Tripadvisor, and Viator all work in tandem to help you boost your online presence, garner more traveller reviews, and effectively manage bookings.
  • We have an exclusive Preferred Partnership with Viator, so you can easily join their platform and enjoy money-saving perks: 0% Bókun booking fees and free yearly subscription checks (12, 24, or 48, depending on your Bókun plan). Viator users can also auto-import Viator products to Bókun and sell those experiences directly on their website.
  • We’re GetYourGuide, Airbnb, and Citvitatis’s #1 restech partner, so you can capture more businesses from their massive audiences and seamlessly manage bookings.
  • We are a Google Things to do connectivity partner, so you can skip Google’s application process and begin selling tours across Google’s search engine and maps.
  • Our Marketplace is one of the largest distribution networks across all restech solutions. Our reseller network includes thousands of businesses in the travel industry — travel agents, destination management companies (DMCs), attractions, educational institutions, accommodation providers such as hoteliers, rental companies, transportation services, and more. You can find resellers to earn bookings on your behalf, resell others’ services for a commission, or create travel packages with partners. We support unlimited partner contracts.
  • Our flexible Referral Tracking lets you partner with any business or professional you choose and build a diverse affiliate network (beyond Marketplace partners). You can work with social media influencers, bloggers, tourism boards, and other businesses in your area, and provide them with trackable booking links to earn reservations for you. Affiliates promote your tours to their audiences and earn a commission for each booking they win for you.
  • Our platform offers robust reporting tools to help you measure bookings and revenue in various ways. You can see which OTAs, partners, and affiliates bring you the most bookings and your most-booked products (and on which channels they’re booked). These insights help you refine your distribution strategies so you can invest in more of what’s working for you. For example, you can open more availability to the OTAs, partners, or affiliates that drive the most business and ensure you’re promoting your most popular products.
  • We offer the lowest booking fees among competitors — only 1.5% for online bookings and 0% Bókun booking fees on Viator reservations (compared to competitors’ fees of up to 6% and 8%). This lets you keep more of what you earn, regardless of where travellers book with you.

See how Bókun users have leveraged our solutions to see exponential growth in our case studies below:

And keep up with the latest Bókun benefits here.

Additional Resources for Selling Tours Online

Interested in other strategies to fill your booking calendars? Check out our guides below:

Try Bókun Today

OTAs give tour operators a straightforward way to reach global audiences, build credibility, and generate bookings without upfront costs. Yes, commission fees eat into your profits, but the exposure and new bookings are well worth it — especially when you’re trying to achieve fast growth.

And Bókun is the best partner to support you as you expand your online reach.

Not only does our system help you organise and manage bookings across all sales channels, but we also offer a variety of other benefits to fuel your growth: exclusive OTA partnerships, our reseller network with thousands of travel industry partners, and Referral Tracking to work with any business or professional and build an expansive affiliate network.

Best of all? You get all of these benefits without paying premium prices. Our super-low fees mean more revenue stays in your pocket, so you can scale faster and continue to invest in your long-term success.

See how Bókun supports your growth goals by starting a 14-day free trial.

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