GetYourGuide is a Berlin-based

startup A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...

online marketplace An online marketplace (or online e-commerce marketplace) is a type of e-commerce website where product or service information is provided by multiple third parties. Online marketplaces are the primary type of multichannel ecommerce and can be a wa ...

for travel activities. GetYourGuide sells

tours Tours ( , ) is one of the largest cities in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the prefecture of the department of Indre-et-Loire. The commune of Tours had 136,463 inhabitants as of 2018 while the population of the whole metr ...

and

excursion An excursion is a trip by a group of people, usually made for leisure, education, or physical purposes. It is often an adjunct to a longer journey or visit to a place, sometimes for other (typically work-related) purposes. Public transportation ...

s, activities including cooking classes, and tickets to

tourist attraction A tourist attraction is a place of interest that tourists visit, typically for its inherent or an exhibited natural or cultural value, historical significance, natural or built beauty, offering leisure and amusement. Types Places of natural ...

s. It offers more than 100,000 products worldwide from more than 20,000 supply partners.

History

The idea for GetYourGuide was conceived of in 2009 by co-founders Johannes, Tao, Martin, and Tobias , who were classmates attending the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. When traveling to Beijing for a student conference with ETH MUN, they found navigating a foreign city as tourists to be difficult. A business plan was developed for a peer-to-peer Internet platform that connected tourists with amateur guides. Later, it was expanded and refined to be an internet booking platform through which travelers could book professional tours and activities. The company was initially funded by the founder's parents and relatives. The business model for GetYourGuide stipulates that it does not offer its own tours or activities, but rather, acts as a mediator between customers and providers. In April 2013, GetYourGuide acquired Gidsy, which had also been developing mobile apps and had a team of 12 developers. As a spin-off of

ETH (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , ac ...

, GetYourGuide was initially headquartered in Zurich. The new company relocated its headquarters in 2012 to Berlin. An office in Zurich was maintained primarily for engineering teams. In October 2017, GetYourGuide opened a new engineering office in Zurich. In November 2017, GetYourGuide announced a $75 million Series D funding round raised to help support expansion in Asia and the Americas. In April 2019, GetYourGuide raised a $484 million investment from

SoftBank Group is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the ...

. This infusion of capital raised its valuation above the $1 billion mark, making it a

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. During the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...

, the company shifted to

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Services

Experience/tour providers list their service on the platform and the provider is charged a commission on the sales. An online customer review system enables potential customers to assess the quality of tour providers. Additionally, GetYourGuide removes providers who consistently get bad reviews from its inventory. In August 2018, GetYourGuide began selling tours under its own brand name. The company mined its data on customer preferences from having sold 15 million tours since its founding nearly a decade ago. From that information, it developed standardized criteria for how to best run a tour. To be labeled a GetYourGuide tour, an operator must agree to follow its best practices regarding meeting points, check-in processes, starting times, duration, and other factors. In return, the retailer will send more customers the operator's way. GetYourGuide headquarters from 2019 in Berlin

References

External links

* {{Official website, getyourguide.com Online travel agencies Online marketplaces of Germany Travel and holiday companies of Germany Transport companies established in 2008 Privately held companies of Switzerland Companies based in Zürich Companies based in Berlin