Interesting move by Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd as it looks to compete head-on with the likes of Viator with the launch of a standalone brand - GoBe - for activities.
The group says GoBe is a subsidiary within the family of businesses and was originally created as a consumer-facing service to recapture lost bookings that its passengers were apparently making for shore excursions on other websites.
It then decided to ramp up the scope of the brand to become a fully-fledged, global tours and activities brand in its own right.
The site operates in two ways: for travellers to a destination, giving them directly-contracted products in almost 900 cities; and cruise passengers who have an existing booking and want to secure a tour when they dock during their voyage.
Its mission, GoBe says, is to accomplish the goals of giving access to a digital platform for search and booking of products, on any device, by "modernising travel ecommerce and focusing on promoting the excitement of travel, not commoditising it".
Overseeing the brand is Billy Campbell, former CEO at Forbes Travel Guide since July 2012 and president of Discovery Networks between 2002 and 2007.
For its launch, GoBe has sourced 8,000 tours from just short of 100 countries.
It wants to double this number within six months and then hit over 30,000 by the middle of 2018.
Campbell says:
"The timing of GoBe is deliberate. With the help of the Boston Consulting Group, we studied the state of the shore excursion and activities space and found that World travelers wanted authentic, local experiences."
GoBe will also be launching as a B2B white label platform for third parties, with hotels part of the strategy to expand the business to partners.
An early interested chain, Marriott (which made an investment of its own this week into tours and activities metasearch service PlacePass), says it will "work closely" with GoBe to integrate content into its events and marketing platform.
Campbell adds:
"We feel strongly that GoBe can and will be the first brand to capture the traveler’s imagination, curry to their needs and build loyalty in the activities space.
"We already have 9,000 daily visitors to the site without “officially” launching with promotional initiatives."