A couple of weeks ago Arival and Phocuswright published Outlook for Travel Experiences 2019–2029. As always, the headline number got the attention: $271 billion in gross bookings in 2025, heading toward $340 billion plus by 2029. And as always, the takeaway seems straightforward: big market, fast growth, low online penetration, huge opportunity. That is all true. But it is also where the conversation often goes off track.
The first chart presents two of the most commonly cited data points:
- Online channels account for just a third of all experiences bookings versus nearly two-thirds for travel overall.
- OTAs represent only 8% of experiences gross bookings, compared with roughly 24% across all travel.
The usual conclusion is that experiences is simply “behind” and therefore full of upside. That may be partly true. But it also misses a more important question: how much of this market is actually serviceable by online travel distribution in the first place?
Experiences Isn’t a Uniform Industry—and Much of It Isn’t Really Travel
The experiences market is not uniform in the way travel segments like hotel or air are. It is an amalgam of 140-plus business categories and 344 experience types (according to the Arival Taxonomy), spanning everything from balloon rides and art museums to cooking classes and kayak rentals. Some of that market is highly touristic and well suited to OTAs. A great deal of it is not. And for anyone trying to assess the real opportunity—whether for an investment, a business plan or a market-entry strategy—that distinction matters much more than the headline number.
This helps explain why OTA share in experiences remains comparatively low. OTAs account for only about 8% of gross bookings today, despite years of growth, billions invested and huge consumer demand for experiences. The issue is not just demand; it is addressability. A very large share of the market is made up of local and regional businesses that do not work with OTAs, do not use modern booking systems, do not actively target travelers and in many cases are not really part of the travel distribution ecosystem at all.
A Close Look at One Market
To put a finer point on this, I analyzed experiences listings in my home city of Atlanta and the surrounding area. We identified just under 1,000 listings on Tripadvisor either in the city itself or within driving distance as a half-day activity or excursion. From there, we removed listings that were not really travel-addressable:
- Bowling alleys
- Art galleries
- Breweries and restaurants (unless they offered a bookable tasting or tour)
- Some family entertainment centers (e.g., Dave & Buster’s)
- Landmarks and historic buildings without a ticketed experience
- Nail salons and most spas (unless they offered a bookable tourism-oriented product)
That process cut the total by more than half to fewer than 450 listings.
And even then, what remained was not some vast pool of OTA-serviceable supply. It was still a long tail of local attractions and activities. Just 11% of the remaining listings were listed on OTAs. That is the more revealing story underneath market sizing: not just how much exists, but how much of it is actually built to be sold through travel channels and how much of it is truly relevant to travelers.
Atlanta experiences: What’s there, what’s listed
| Category | Share of ATL Listings | % Listed on OTAs |
| Activity | 43% | 5% |
| Attraction | 30% | 5% |
| Tour | 27% | 26% |
| Total | 100% | 11% |
That is the real story underneath market sizing. The activities category is the largest by listing count, but almost none are listed on OTAs. Attractions are a large share of the market, but again showed very limited OTA presence. Tours, by contrast, are far more distribution-ready. In other words, the categories that look large on paper are not always the categories that are truly serviceable by travel-focused platforms.
A closer look at one subcategory—museums—shows what is going on. Of the 75 museums and galleries in the Atlanta sample, only three are listed on an OTA. The vast majority serve a local or regional audience. Parents do not use, and do not need, a global OTA to plan a visit to their local science or children’s museum. In short, many listings are substantial, valuable businesses or institutions, but they are not naturally part of the global travel distribution system.
This helps explain one of the biggest disconnects in the sector. In Arival’s Global Operator Landscape surveys, which we field through our own channels and with industry partners such as OTAs, booking systems and other travel industry associations, we often see OTA share around 30% of sales. But when we size the market as a whole, OTA share is far lower.
Why? Because our survey samples skew toward the digitally active, trade-connected part of the global travel industry. The full experiences market includes a much larger offline and local long tail: community museums, local attractions, classes, small activity businesses and other operators that may absolutely be part of “experiences,” but are not really—or not yet—in the OTA universe.
The Real Opportunity Is…
So what is the real opportunity? It is still very large. But it is not the whole $271 billion experiences market—at least not for everybody, and not now. The real opportunity is the serviceable slice of the market a given platform is actually equipped to serve: operators and attractions that are bookable, connected, tourism-oriented and capable of scaling through digital distribution. That slice is growing as booking-system adoption rises, online planning becomes more common and OTAs improve supply connectivity.
That said, a lot of those non-touristic experiences are not unaddressable by OTAs. Some are simply being served by a different kind of platform, such as those built for local demand, gifting or regional leisure rather than global travel distribution. That is an important distinction and one the travel industry often overlooks. Here are four examples:
- Groupon, one of the largest online experiences sellers in the U.S., is all in on local demand. Movie tickets, bowling, spas, family entertainment centers and tourist attractions all sit side by side.
- The same is true of GetOutPass. The 40-plus attractions and activities on its Georgia pass are overwhelmingly local or drive-market experiences, and only a handful appear on more travel-oriented OTAs.
- In the U.K., Days Out With The Kids has built an impressive following around attractions and activities for families, aimed primarily at local and regional audiences.
- Gifting-focused platforms such as Virgin Experience Gifts, Adrenaline, Tinggly, Xperience Days and others are built more around locals, occasions and gifting than around travel planning. They focus on immersive, interactive experiences such as adventure activities and culinary experiences.
And of course, Airbnb Experiences has a distinct focus on highly unique, personalized experiences led by local hosts and experts (although they are now making a concerted push into more traditional tours, larger operators and visitor attractions).
The opportunity is tremendous, but it’s not infinite and it is not the same as the total market. That is the mistake often made by observers who look at the top-line number and assume it all points in the same direction. A great deal of spending in experiences sits in segments that are local, fragmented, lightly digitized or simply not a natural fit for travel distribution.
That is some truth about market sizing in experiences. The big number matters. But the more important question is not simply how big the market is. It is how much of that market can actually be served—and by whom.
About the author
Douglas Quinby is co-founder and senior advisor at
Arival.