What travel agencies do when they can’t earn enough money for doing nothing
Recently, I was reading other bloggers’ complaints about hidden costs and customer expectations, and suddenly I realized I had the same problem.
Imagine you are sitting in your living room scanning the internet for offers in the city you have ever wanted to visit. You can’t discern information from advertising, and so you land at GetYourGuide.
Tours, adventures, and special events mesmerize you, and your dream of a unique vacation is becoming a reality. Unfortunately, this paradise has a very poisonous snake, and that is what I want you to explain here.
Tour operators like me are forced to cooperate with such platforms, whether we want to or not, because they invest money in search engine advertising that my colleagues and I can’t afford.
For this “service,” which is more akin to extortion than a favor, we are asked to pay a 20% commission.
As an example, let’s take my Deutsches Museum Tour for 95 €, which includes a 16 € museum ticket. Added the 20% commission, this is for the customer 119 €.
Is that all? Just 20% commission?
Well, no, it’s not! If a product sells well, greed takes over, and they suddenly wrote to me to say they’re charging a 25% commission instead of the 20% we agreed on.
Reading their statement and understanding that they consider themselves a superior organization and that we are not equal partners raised some eyebrows and made me analyze their calculations carefully. What I found was amazing.
So sadly, our example, the Deutsches Museum Tour for 95 €, includes a 16 € museum ticket. Added the 25% commission; this is now 128 € for the customer.
Let’s explain GetYourGuide based on geography.
They are in Berlin. I’m in Munich. So we both live in the same country.
Yes, dear reader, this really needs to be explained.
In my country, Germany, we use the Euro. Seems simple for the calculation, but not when working with American companies. I sincerely never had good references in business ethics from the USA, but they are always the same and think they are more intelligent than others, making such companies undesirable, but we are forced to cooperate because they sit on the first pages of the internet.
An analysis of the numbers shows I missed out on 7% of my money.
Where are the missing numbers? I asked myself.
So I wrote to them, and they explained that this is the exchange rate.
What does this mean for the person dreaming of tours, events and a good vacation?
What does this mean for customers?
Discussing with GetYourGuide is useless. They answer slowly, two or three days after you wrote, and deliver just the fact “pay and don’t argue, or you suffer consequences”. This is known as the mafia method.
The solution for me is to raise my price again.
So the nightmare goes on, and in our example, the Deutsches Museum Tour for 95 € includes a 16 € museum ticket. Added the 25% commission plus the 7% currency conversion; the total is 141 € for the customer.
Is comfort this worth?
Many customers argue with my guides, claiming that, given the experience they expected, it was too expensive, and that 46 € per person is just commission for GetYourGuide.
I asked them if the comfort was that valuable, and all answered that they had no idea of the hidden commissions.
In times when we use Amazon and don’t pay their commission, it is becoming more crucial that customers do a bit more work to save their money.
Did you make this mistake?
Never complain, but do research accurately and ask for advice. If your travel agent books from such platforms, you are not just paying about 50% more, but sometimes double, because your travel agent must earn some money for their work, but you can ask them to do just direct bookings and avoid such atrocious commissions.
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