Careers at GetYourGuide
Mission
GetYourGuide operates an online platform that allows tourists to book tours, excursions and activities and enables third-party operators to list and market products and services.
History
GetYourGuide was founded in 2008 by a group of six students from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology: Johannes Reck (“Reck”), Tao Tao (“Tao”), Martin Sieber (“Sieber”), Tobias Rein (“Rein”), Jochen Mattes (“Mattes”) and Pascal Mathis (“Mathis”). Of the Company’s co-founders only Mathis and Mattes no longer hold executive positions.
GetYourGuide has its roots in a platform set up by the six students that allowed students to sell guided tours around their home city, with anyone able to host and book activities. While they found it initially difficult to scale the business, they also identified that professional vendors were not well-equipped to provide reservations online. In order to cater to these suppliers, the six students upgraded their existing peer-to-peer marketplace to function as a reservation system, where vendors could upload activities, their prices and their availability. A business to consumer platform was developed on top of this and was opened to the public in 2010.
The GetYourGuide team then focused on developing its network of merchants, with an initial target of landing 30 bookings per day. After five rounds of funding the Company has received more than $95 million in investment from investors including Spark Capital, Sunstone Capital and Nokia Growth Partners. GetYourGuide currently offers more than 20,000 activities across six continents and operates through a network of offices in Europe and North America.
Benefits at GetYourGuide
Business model of GetYourGuide
Customer Segments
GetYourGuide’s platform is primarily designed to provide access to a full-range of available activities, excursions and services in a given destination for tourists and travellers. This covers a broad selection of activities, ranging from walking tours, cooking classes and transit services to winter sports, bar crawls and extreme sports.
GetYourGuide also targets third-party service providers and activity organisers that wish to expand their reach and visibility with a view to increasing their rate of sales. These comprise smaller, local companies that do not already have an international audience.
Thirdly, GetYourGuide allows established travel agencies and companies to generate revenue through provision of affiliate marketing services.
Value Propositions
For its end-users GetYourGuide’s greatest value is that it enables travellers to book a range of activities and services from a single platform, before arriving at a destination. The Company’s various partnerships also enable users to access deals and offers that may otherwise not have been available.
The GetYourGuide platform is attractive to third-party suppliers as it enables them to advertise their products and services to a larger audience with no registration or listing cost. It also offers value to established affiliate partners which can generate revenue through marketing and integration.
Channels
GetYourGuide can be accessed via its desktop and mobile websites at www.getyourguide.com, as well as through its iOS and Google Play apps.
Customer Relationships
For customers GetYourGuide is a self-service platform. Users are able to make bookings with all available suppliers and in all available locations directly through www.getyourguide.com, with no interference from the Company itself.
The Company’s multilingual sales teams can be contacted via email and telephone, with separate phone numbers for customers in the UK, the US, Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany and an international number for all other users.
GetYourGuide’s relationships with suppliers and affiliates are more personalised. Each of its third-party suppliers receives assistance from a personal account manager. Affiliate partners also receive a bespoke service that requires direct interaction with the GetYourGuide sales and marketing team.
Key Activities
GetYourGuide develops and maintains an online platform through which tourists are able to book tours, activities, classes and events in multiple destinations worldwide.
It also manages partnerships with affiliate sellers and suppliers enabling operators to reach a larger audience with their offers and for travel agencies to generate revenue through commissions.
Key Partners
GetYourGuide maintains an affiliate partner network that comprises numerous travel agents, resellers, and leisure companies, through which GetYourGuide products are marketed. This includes high-profile companies such as Opodo, Lufthansa Holidays, Tui and STA Travel. The Company has a three-tiered partnership system.
Basic general affiliates receive a variety of tools and advertising materials, as well as access to the activity-tracking platform, while advanced partners, with which the Company has an established relationship, receiving greater commissions and access to the GetYourGuide API integrations tools. A third tier is reserved for selected partners that require more tailored solutions. Once a company is admitted to the partner program they are eligible for a 6% base commission rate. Travel agents immediately receive a 10% rate, but are not given access to the integration tools made available to other partners.
GetYourGuide also partners with numerous professional suppliers of local tourist services across a number of countries worldwide. This includes tour operators, local attractions, transport and activities providers, and sports and events organisers, which provide the Company’s catalogue of products and services. These partners are afforded access to translation, analytics and payment services tools provided by GetYourGuide.
Key Resources
GetYourGuide’s key resources are its technology infrastructure, including the platform itself and its servers, and its network of suppliers, without which the Company would have no products to sell.
Its personnel is also a key resource, in particular its sales and marketing teams, which manage the Company’s partnerships, and its engineering teams, which maintain and develop the Company’s proprietary software.
Cost Structure
GetYourGuide incurs significant costs as an employer of a large and multilingual workforce, including several regional sales and marketing teams.
This regional structure also leads to costs in operating several international offices, all of which accrue rental and utility costs.
GetYourGuide is also obliged to pay commissions on sales to its affiliate marketing partners.
Revenue Streams
It is free for suppliers to list their products and services on the GetYourGuide platform, however a commission is charged for every booking that is accepted by these suppliers. The size of this commission is agreed directly and on an individual basis between GetYourGuide and the supplier.
Our team
info: Johannes has served as GetYourGuide’s Chief Executive Officer since 2009. Prior to co-founding GetYourGuide, Reck served briefly as a visiting associate at The Boston Consulting Group in 2009. Reck graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in January 2009 with a Master’s degree.
info: Tao Tao has served as GetYourGuide’s Chief Operating Officer since 2009. He previously worked as an intern at Siemens, Shanghai for a brief time in 2007 and was President of Swiss management consulting firm ETH Juniors between 2006 and 2007. Tao is a graduate of Peking University, the University of Tilburg and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
info: Martin initially served as GetYourGuide’s Vice President for Product before assuming the role of Head of Mobile in February 2015. He does not appear to have any other current corporate appointments. Sieber previously served as an advisor to question and answer app LocalUncle, and has completed internships at Boveri Junior Research Group Innate Immunity in 2007 and at EMBL Gene Expression Unit, part of the Steinmetz Group, between 2005 and 2006. Sieber holds a bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biotechnology from Heidelberg University and a master’s degree in Cell Biology from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
info: Tobias has been GetYourGuide’s Chief Technology Officer since 2009. He previously served as an application developer at media company Palindrom from 2003 to 2004, and completed a brief internship at UBS in 2001. Rein holds a master’s degree in Information Technology and Electrical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.