OTA platforms and experience distribution
An experience business relying on its own website alone leaves most of the demand on the table: an international visitor searches on a platform, not on your site. OTA distribution opens markets advertising cannot reach — at a commission that on some platforms exceeds a fifth of the ticket price. So it only makes sense when the route back to direct booking is planned from the start.
What we deliver
- Selecting and setting up OTA platforms by venue type and target markets
- Integration with global platforms — Viator, GetYourGuide, Headout
- Expansion into a second wave — Booking Activities, Expedia, TUI Musement, Tiqets
- Gradual scaling into specialist and regional platforms
- Selecting and implementing a booking system and channel manager
- Connecting platforms through APIs to a single central calendar
- Managing listings, descriptions, photos and prices across channels
- Operating manuals and staff training for ticket validation at reception
One calendar, or you will oversell
Once a venue sells on three or more platforms, checking availability by hand stops working. Two bookings landing on the same slot is all it takes to create a situation somebody on reception has to resolve, through no fault of their own.
So the booking system and channel manager come before expanding into more channels. Availability and pricing have to live in one place and flow into the platforms automatically, not through a spreadsheet.
Commission is the price of a market you would not otherwise see
Platform commission is high, and it is fair to bear it as long as it brings bookings that would not otherwise exist. It stops being fair the moment the platform delivers customers who already know the venue and would have found it anyway.
So profitability is evaluated per channel, and we watch for the point where the balance flips. Part of the strategy is a route for shifting some bookings to your own site — through pricing, content for returning guests and review management.
Platform ranking is managed, not awaited
Platforms rank offers by conversion, rating and listing completeness. A venue with five photos and a terse description falls below a competitor with twenty photos and replies to reviews, even when the offer is identical.
So listing management is not a one-off form fill. It is ongoing work with content, pricing and reviews — and it is measurable, because ranking in results can be tracked.
Frequently asked
- How many platforms is it sensible to start on?
- One or two global ones. Launching eight channels at once means dealing with listings, prices and operational mistakes eight times over before you learn which ones actually sell. Expanding to the next wave makes sense only once the first runs without intervention.
- Will going onto platforms destroy our direct bookings?
- The risk is real if the platform sells cheaper than your own site. So pricing is settled first — the direct channel must remain at least as attractive. The rest are mostly customers who would never have heard of the venue otherwise.
Related services
Local and platform marketing
Map and booking-platform profiles plus systematic review management. For venues, these decide occupancy as much as advertising does.
Read more →10Websites
Building, redesigning and maintaining websites — and steadily raising the conversion share of traffic you already pay for.
Read more →05Analytics, measurement and reporting
Measurement that matches the accounts, and reporting you can read daily instead of once a month.
Read more →