Viator vs. GetYourGuide: Which Is Best? (My Honest Opinion)
As much as I love traveling on my own and exploring destinations independently, there are some situations where I like to book a guided tour, activity, or excursion. Viator and GetYourGuide are two of the biggest names in the game when it comes to tour booking platforms, but which one should you actually choose?
As someone who has extensively used both Viator and GetYourGuide while traveling, this is my honest review. If you’re planning a trip, you might have come across Viator and GetYourGuide in your research.
Both websites allow you to book tours, activities, day trips, and other excursions.
For example, you could book a food tour in NYC or a day trip from Paris to Normandy. But you might be asking yourself which platform to choose, and which one is better than the other?
I’ve booked tons of travel experiences through each platform (dozens each!), so I’m here to answer those questions for you to help you decide which one to choose (and give you my top tips for booking tours!)
Background on Viator and GetYourGuide
Viator was founded in 1995, and acquired by TripAdvisor in 2014. It’s the larger of the two platforms, allowing you to book more than 345,000 travel experiences in destinations all around the world.
GetYourGuide, on the other hand, was founded in 2009 but has rapidly grown in popularity. It offers more than 100,000 bookable travel experiences from 20,000 supply partners around the world.
It’s important to note that neither Viator nor GetYourGuide is actually a tour company.
Instead, they are tour aggregators. This means that the listings on both websites come from third-party tour operators, but you book through Viator or GetYourGuide, and they handle your booking.
A lot of people get this wrong, so it’s important to know before you book anything. Neither Viator nor GetYourGuide is actually your tour operator. You can see who the actual tour operator is when you’re booking a tour on either platform, and you’ll get the contact details for the tour operator.
Similarities Between Viator and GetYourGuide
There are more similarities between Viator and GetYourGuide beyond both platforms being tour aggregators. For example, both offer you the ability to customize and filter your search results.
You can search through thousands of tours based on your destination, dates, type of tour or activity you’re looking for, price range, and other factors. This makes finding the perfect tour really easy.
Both platforms also offer free cancellation or rescheduling up to 24 hours in advance on most tours. For me, this is a huge incentive to use these platforms, because it gives me maximum flexibility.
Viator and GetYourGuide both also provide 24/7 customer support in case you have trouble with your tour operator. (Although in all of the dozens of tours I’ve taken, I’ve only had an issue with one of them.) This is another added benefit that can give you some extra peace of mind when booking your travel plans.
Also, both Viator and GetYourGuide typically offer the same price as booking directly with a third-party tour provider. Even if there’s a slight difference (usually no more than a few dollars), I find it to be worth it because I know I’m getting the security of being able to cancel for a full refund if I need to.
How to Choose Which Platform to Use
I like to travel independently and do things on my own, but there are certain scenarios where I’ll book a tour. Typically, I’ll do this if I want to learn more about a particular destination from a knowledgeable local guide, if I want to do a unique activity that would be hard to arrange on my own, or if I want to take a day trip that would be logistically difficult on my own. Booking a tour is a solution to all of these issues.
So when I want to book a tour, I will check both Viator and GetYourGuide and compare my options.
Even though Viator is more established and has a larger inventory of tours overall, I sometimes find that GetYourGuide actually has a wider selection of tours depending on the destination.
Let’s say I’m searching for something like “Temple of Poseidon day trip from Athens“. I will input that on Viator and GetYourGuide, and open up maybe two or three options from each platform.
Then I’ll take a closer look at each one and read the itinerary, see what’s included, check out the reviews, and compare the prices in order to determine which option is the best one for me to book.
My Top Tips for Booking Tours
When booking tours on either platform, I highly recommend checking the ratings and reviews.
Both Viator and GetYourGuide allow travelers to leave a rating out of five stars and write a review after completing a tour. These are very important to look at before you decide to book a tour.
I personally tend to look for tours that have a higher number of ratings, at least 50 or more. If a tour has very few or zero ratings, but it looks interesting to me, it could just mean that it is newly listed on the platform. In this case, I’ll try to research the tour operator to see if I can find reviews for them online.
I also look for tours that have an average rating of at least four out of five stars.
I’m personally really hesitant to book anything with an average rating lower than four stars because that means that most travelers had pretty major issues with the tour, and I don’t want to risk it.
Another thing I highly recommend is getting the free Rakuten browser extension.
Rakuten is a cashback shopping extension that you can activate and earn money back on online purchases. I always use it for both Viator and GetYourGuide. The percentage of cashback that you’ll earn is always changing, but I’ve seen it as high as 15%, and it’s often in the range of 5% to 10%, which is great too.
I also recommend reading the itinerary and description closely. Before you book a tour, you’ll want to get an idea of exactly what is included. Some tour operators write really thorough descriptions and detailed itineraries, and that will sway me over another tour operator that doesn’t have much written.
Viator vs. GetYourGuide: Which to Use?
If you’ve made it this far, you’ve probably realized that I recommend both Viator and GetYourGuide. I think both platforms are very similar and offer the same benefits, making them both a good choice.
When it comes down to it, I can’t recommend one over the other.
Instead, I would say that your best bet is using both platforms to comparison shop. You can look at a few similar tours on each platform, and then decide which one is best for your needs. Either way, I think you can feel confident booking with Viator or GetYourGuide, and I’m a big fan of both platforms.
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