Visitor attractions
Become a Viator supplier, plus GetYourGuide and Tiqets
Become a Viator supplier or sell on GetYourGuide and Tiqets without double bookings: their visitors book the same places as your own shop and scan in as usual.
· 5 min read
You run walking tours, a boat trip or a small museum, and every summer someone asks: "Are you on Viator?" Tourists book their activities in the same app they used in Rome last year, not on your own website. So you want to become a Viator supplier, and perhaps sell through GetYourGuide or Tiqets as well. The next question is the harder one: how do you keep those platforms and your own ticket shop in step, so your 2 pm tour doesn't start with twenty-five people when it only has twenty places?
What a supplier on these platforms actually is
A supplier is whoever runs the activity: the guide, the museum, the boat operator. The platform is a shop window. It shows your offer to travelers, takes their payment and keeps a commission for doing so.
The three you'll come across most often:
| Platform | Strong in |
|---|---|
| Viator | Tours and activities, part of Tripadvisor |
| GetYourGuide | Tours, activities and attractions, with suppliers who run them themselves |
| Tiqets | Museums and attractions, tickets that work straight away |
How to become a supplier
On all three, the process looks roughly the same:
- You sign up through their supplier page (
supplier.viator.comfor Viator,getyourguide.supplyfor GetYourGuide, the Become a Supplier button for Tiqets). - You fill in your business details: company number, insurance, bank account.
- The platform checks your details.
- You submit your activities, with good photos, an English description and a clear cancellation policy. Once approved, you're live.
The exact conditions and fees today are on each platform's own site. The steps per platform are covered in more detail in the guide Selling on Viator, GetYourGuide or Tiqets as a supplier.
Work out what you keep first
A platform sells at the price it chooses and pays you a net price. The difference is the commission. For tours and attractions it usually sits somewhere between 20 and 30 percent, an estimate based on what the industry states publicly. What you pay is in your own contract.
Here's an example: your walking tour costs 18 euros. With a 25 percent commission, you keep 13.50 euros. For a Spanish tourist who would never have found you otherwise, that's a good deal. For someone who would have booked directly with you, it costs you 4.50 euros. That's why many suppliers put just one or two products on a platform: the classic tour in English, say, not the group visits.
The real problem: double bookings
If you're on a platform without a connection, you work with an allocation: "Viator may sell ten places a day." That leads to one of two bad outcomes. Either those ten places stay empty while your own shop shows "sold out", or you sell them yourself too, and one Saturday you're at the meeting point with too many people. Sending or retyping a list every week helps, until someone forgets.
One count for everyone
Passavo speaks OCTO, the agreed language that platforms for tours and attractions use to talk to a booking system. With that connection, the reseller checks live how many places are still free and writes its booking straight into your schedule.
Take the 2 pm tour with twenty places, set up as a time slot. Six people book in your own ticket shop, nine through GetYourGuide, three through Viator and two at the desk. All twenty count against the same time slot. When it's full, it's full for everyone at once: in your shop, at your till and in the traveler's app.
A booking happens in two steps. When a traveler clicks book, we hold their places for a moment. Once they have paid on the platform, the platform confirms the booking and we create the tickets, with a QR code that goes on their voucher. If the platform doesn't confirm, the places are released automatically.
Nothing changes at your meeting point
The Viator visitor shows the same kind of QR code as someone who bought from you. Your guide scans it with the same scanning app. In your orders you can see which partner the visitor came through, and that payment happened at the reseller: that money flows through the platform, not through your own payment provider.
If a tour can't go ahead, because a guide is ill or a storm rolls in, you cancel the booking yourself, with a reason the reseller can see. The tickets become invalid and the places are released.
How to set it up
- Go to Settings → Resellers and create a separate key for each platform. To try things out first, tick Test key.
- On the same screen, choose which products resellers may sell. By default, nothing is open.
- For each of those products, set a price with the channel Reseller: your net price. Without that price, nothing can be booked.
- Give your contact at the platform the API address and the key. On most platforms you enter these yourself, in their supplier portal.
Start with one product and a test key. Check that the booking lands in your schedule and that the QR code scans, then open up the rest.
What it costs
The reseller connection is included in Growth and Pro. You pay Passavo a fixed amount per month (€29.00 for Growth), including for bookings that come in through a platform. What you give up to the platform is agreed with that platform.
If you work with time slots, also read Time slots for your museum or exhibition. See what Passavo does for tours and guides, or compare the plans on the pricing page.
