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A Zero-commission OTA for the activities sector - you must be nuts?

When I was deep in the Tours & Activities world running Urban Adventures, barely a week went by without a public or private decry of the “outrageous commissions” taken by the sector OTA’s from a tour operator. Nothing has changed since those days except the commissions have gone higher and conditions of working with the OTA’s have become more onerous. The weekly outcries are still there and they reach fever pitch around conferences like Arival.

Urban Adventures was a collaborative marketing business. Under a single brand we brought operators together from some 160 cities. It also had its own set of onerous conditions. It was for a very specific product type that was quite niche. It only had one operator per destination. There were rules around branding that didn’t come naturally to operators. It took a lot of training (time & money) to get each operator up to standard. All these factors are major inhibitors to scale. It also kind of worked (450,000 customers p.a.; zero SEM spend; 17% CAGR across 10 years). because a customer who experienced the type of travel offered, had the option to go again in another city they were travelling...