What is Viator?
Bought by TripAdvisor in 2014, Viator is based in San Francisco and is a leader in the market of excursions, activities, and attractions. In addition to that, it offers great experiences all over the world, pleasing all the possible expectations and demands of different types of travelers.
This platform reaches over 350 million travel planners and counts more than 3000 affiliate partners, and a surprising number of 175,000 travel agents. Viator is available in more than 10 different languages and accepts 1 type of currency. Undoubtedly, selling your experiences in Viator has attractive perks as you could potentially attract a large number of people.
Why sell on Viator
As Viator reaches travelers that are yet to decide what to do once they have arrived at their destination, it offers a surprising number of possibilities around the world. As a tour operator, what's left for you is to take a look at the great advantages of pertaining to this OTA:
- Large audience reach: According to SimilarWeb, Viator has over 11 million total visits per month, and the number keeps growing. This go-to site for travelers seeking unique travel experiences will give you greater reach to audiences around the world, and will also help you increase your monthly bookings due to the sheer increase in exposure.
- No registration fee: It's completely free to become an experience-supplier on Viator, on top of this, registering is quick and easy as it can be done in a few simple steps. They require a brief introduction to your business' values and experiences. Afterwards, you can upload your products and manage them.
- Mobile-friendly: Being part of TripAdvisor's distribution market will make your business appear in front of lots of potential clients. The odds of selling your experiences increase substantially with their mobile app, as of now, it has around 450 million downloads! This OTA provides a superior user experience with a simplified browsing and booking process.
- Direct payments: Viator handles payments and sends them directly to your bank account in an automated electronic way. So forget the time-consuming extra hassle. They completely simplify the payment process and only charge you a commission once you sell your tours or activities on their platform.
- Straight-forward setup and management: One of the many great things about this online marketplace is that creating a listing and managing your reservations is very intuitive and effortless. Viator also checks your availability in real-time to make sure no unwanted overbooked experiences occur.
Things to remember
In past times, Viator used to be a semi-closed platform for the longest time, which means you had to be selected by hand to get there. This is no longer the case as any operator can sign up and add their activities and experiences. We've listed a couple of points that are important to acknowledge before you do so:
- Adjusting prices: The prices of your tours and activities on Viator must match the prices your business has set on other platforms, for example, your website. On the other hand, the actual prices of your experiences could be lower on this platform.
- Creating product pages from scratch: You only integrate your inventory when you add to Viator tours through your online booking engine. To have your product up in the marketplace, you'll have to make it more appealing to potential customers. From your Viator account, operators can add detailed descriptions of tours with high-quality images to ensure that they don’t get lost in the sea of products.
- Flexible cancellation policy: Undoubtedly, one of the most attractive benefits to their visitors is the cancellation policy guaranteed by this OTA can turn into a hotspot for operators. With Viator, customers who cancel a week in advance will receive a complete refund. Travelers that cancel 3 or 6 days before the tour or activity, get a 50% refund.
- High competition: One of the consequences of this exponential growth of Viator, of course, is a marketplace filled with a comprehensive range of tours and activities that suit every type of person. This could be an indicator of this OTA becoming saturated with repetitive experiences, so you'll need to stand out with an interesting product or service that sets your business apart.
- Variable commission: There could be a substantial commission involved as it will depend on the prices that you set while creating your products. This company charges a fee when a sale happens, and they require operators to set the lowest price possible (as it can't be higher than the prices you've set on other channels).
