The best day tour aggregators
Three main criteria: lowest prices with best deals, easy to use and reliable, largest inventory of listings
Or click here to go to GetYourGuide >>
#1 Best overall - GetYourGuide
- Best deals: besides offering great deals on skip the line tickets (essential in Europe), tours and transport, GetYourGuide also offers a best price guarantee. The company has also introduced its own offering called "GetYourGuide Original", which offers qualified guides, small groups, priority access, hidden highlights and a 100% money back guarantee.
- Ease of use: very clean interface which makes it really easy to browse through and to quickly understand each option. As a global leader, the platform has a ton of user reviews and ratings to help guide your purchase decision.
- Diverse inventory: GetYourGuide, alongside Viator, are the global leaders in day tours. Although Viator has a larger inventory of tours and activities, GetYourGuide has a more comprehensive range (e.g. traditional and alternative sightseeing tours, adventure activities, tickets) of products to choose from.
- Some details: would have liked to see a rewards program, as well as how many times a certain tour, ticket or transport has been bought (this is available in Klook below).
#2 Best in Asia - Klook
- Best deals: Klook is especially strong in East Asia, and you can find good discounted deals that are even cheaper than going direct (e.g. boxing stadium tickets in Phuket; airport transfers, etc). They have a best price guarantee as well as a rewards program (Klook credits) that is easily redeemable as discounts on future tours.
- Ease of use: very easy to filter and to book. There are also useful statistics such as number of people who have booked the tour, the number of the reviews as well as the reviews themselves. The platform has tons of reviews as users are incentivized to provide reviews and pictures for Klook credits.
- Diverse inventory: the tours, experiences, transport and miscellaneous items such as SIM cards are very well curated with a diverse set of options that travellers will find useful in this part of the world.
- Refunds: online reviews seem to indicate difficulty or delay with getting refunds if something goes wrong (e.g. driver/operator disappears). To prevent this from happening, make sure to only book those that have tons of good reviews and get in contact with the operator after your booking to confirm it.
Klook.com
Or click here to go to Klook >>
The best multi-day tour aggregators
Three main criteria: lowest prices with best deals, easy to use and reliable, largest inventory of listings
Or click here to go to Tourradar >>
#1 Best overall - Tourradar
- Large inventory: there is no one else that comes close to Tourradar in the field of multi-day tours. The platform offers 35,000+ multi-day tours from 1500+ carefully selected operators (reputable names such as Intrepid Travel, Contiki, etc) for 160+ countries.
- Ease of use: the company has seen 1 million departures and its 100,000+ genuine traveller reviews makes it easy to pick the winners from the duds. There are also many features which make it easy to evaluate and book such tours (e.g. many filters, availability tables, itinerary brochures, monthly price comparison).
- Best deals: Tourradar offers a best price guarantee, a rewards program (travel credits if you book or refer a friend) and do not charge booking or credit card fees (a hidden fee charged by some travel agents). From time to time, the company also has promotions and contests to win tours.
- Small operators: if you are looking for small, local operators however, you may not find them. These are better found through search engines such as Google, TripAdvisor or via a local contact.
What are the alternative tour options?
- Direct with local operators found offline: often times, you may be able to get a cheaper deal. However, it takes a lot of time to search and compare. The lack of online reviews means one may fall for scams as well.
- Direct with local operators found online: some of these operators (e.g. Intrepid Travel, G Adventures) are found on the earlier mentioned tour aggregators. These aggregators provide a price match guarantee so such operators cannot undercut them. There are also those not found on these aggregators (e.g. Rick Steves’ Europe, Walks of Italy). These operators tend to have good brand names and provide high quality tours but can be rather pricey.
- Other tour aggregators: there are other aggregators such as Viator, one of the global leaders, though it is mentioned earlier why GetYourGuide was recommended over them. There are also smaller ones (i.e. smaller catalogue) which focus on certain regions, such as KKday and Voyagin in developed parts of Asia, Musement in Europe, Peek in North America, etc.
- Local guides: this is worth a look if you are looking for something off the beaten path and more personal (e.g. ToursByLocals, Withlocals, Showaround, ViaHero, AirBnB Experiences). For standard attractions and activities, it is still better to use the big aggregators as they have the bargaining power and a large inventory of listings.
- Bundled tours: some platforms bundle tours together with their other offerings to make the overall package cheaper (e.g. Expedia, Thomas Cook). This can be worth it if you are very flexible with your travel plans and don’t mind spending time and effort to research and to mix and match.
- Traditional offline travel agents: with this channel, you may lose out on potential reward points you can gain via online payment or with some online travel agents and aggregators. However, it can be useful if you don’t have time to research or need to arrange a complex or highly customized trip.