HomeToGo is partnering with GetYourGuide to integrate experiences in its vacation rental marketplace.
The goal is to “offer travelers seamless access to incredible experiences as part of the vacation rental booking process,” HomeToGo said.
The partnership is intended to simplify the travel planning process, the company said.
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GetYourGuide experiences have been directly integrated with the HomeToGo platform for the “post-booking journey” for users in all markets. That will give users access to a selection of GetYourGuide tours, attractions and activities near their chosen destination once they are on the HomeToGo booking details page or on the post-booking email.
The partnership reflects an ongoing trend in the industry for more focus on experiences, with hotels, short-term rentals and the like looking to incorporate experiences with their offerings.
Matija Marijan, CEO of Turneo, a B2B platform that works with hotels to distribute experiences, said that while hotels are still selling rooms to make money, “they're using experiences to make themselves relevant earlier in the purchase, to say, ‘Hey, you want to come to this hotel because of all these experiences you can do there.’”
Tripadvisor Group CEO Matt Goldberg said that the experiences business is growing with a jump in the Viator marketplace by 59% in the past quarter from the same quarter last year.
“This is a category experiencing explosive growth,” Goldberg said. “We see it in the fast-growing global market. We see it in our own numbers – we’re selling three times as many experiences as pre-pandemic, and we have as many travelers visiting us for experiences as we do hotels.”
And Airbnb, which has a vertical called Experiences that started a pause from taking new listings in April, said it expects to grow the vertical in the future.
Investments, too, have illustrated an ongoing interest in experience-focused companies. In June, Beyonk, an experiences-focused technology startup, raised $5.8 million, and last year Way, which helps hotels enter the experience economy, raised $20 million in a Series A round of funding.