Mysterious algorithms and higher rankings top tour and activity issues

The twists and turns in the distribution of tours and activities has made for many a headline in recent months.

Online travel giants bidding on branded keywords, the value provided by OTAs and the quirks of ranking algorithms are all contentious issues.

A debate around distribution at the recent Arival event in Berlin earlier this month was no exception, with operators and OTAs fighting in their respective corners.

Jean-Marc Champrobert, chief commercial officer of M56 Group, was clear on the importance of working in partnership.

“What we want is partnership and not to be in competition with each other. We sometimes have the feeling that it is not always a partnership so we have to work together to define clearly what is possible and what is not.”

TripAdvisor Experiences regional director of supply Andrew Aley argues that it’s about providing value to tour operators and that the conversations he has are more about how to increase bookings.

Tiqets CEO Luuc Elzinga believes operators need to be asking themselves what distribution partners are providing.

“Do you have a good discussion about whether you are able as an external company to increase conversion and bring more people than they would have done, and are you also able to sell more expensive products so that the yield multiplied by the revenue is higher," he says.

"If it’s just about cannibalization, if you’re just swapping a box office for a box office, you should stop advertising, they don’t add any value. It’s about bringing more visitors and more revenue.”

Trying to interpret how different OTA algorithms sort and rank tours listings was also raised with Simone Gozzi, CEO of City Wonders, describing them as a “black box.”

He added that conversations around commission are really hard because of the impact of rankings.

Both Tiqets and TripAdvisor stressed that rankings are based on the quality of the experience, with Aley saying that tours suppliers cannot pay more to rank higher.

Aley also stressed that TripAdvisor listings are unbiased, whether suppliers are Bokun users or not, after confusion following the Arival event last September.

“For the avoidance of doubt our search listing are unbiased, including Bokun users and non-Bokun users. They are not preferred in that natural sort order, but we believe we want to digitalize this industry, and a big part of that is to make products bookable online.”

Correction: The original version of this article included an incorrect spelling for Simone Gozzi.