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 realised 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 mesmerise 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 favour, 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 organisation and that we are not equal partners raised some eyebrows and made me analyse their calculations carefully. What I found was astonishing.
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 sit in Berlin. I sit 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 ever 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 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.
GetYourGuide answered a never made question
Dear Paul,
Thank you for your patience.
Please accept our apologies for the delay and for any inconvenience caused.
After a thorough review, the discrepancy you are referring to is a result from VAT on commission, which is applied on all German suppliers who are registered for VAT, in your case thats 19% VAT on commission which appears as VAT on GYG services on the invoice.
When a supplier registered for VAT offers tours on GYG, they are considered to be providing a service (i.e., the tour). In such cases, VAT must be included in the price set on the supplier portal, assuming the supplier is VAT-registered, and the tour is taxable. Customers pay the VAT-inclusive price for the tour, and it becomes the supplier’s responsibility to remit this VAT to their tax authority. GYG acts as an intermediary, and the responsibility for VAT on the sale of a tour lies with the supplier, except for T&T account where GYG is responsible for VAT.
For further details on this i encourage you to visit our FAQ article on VAT.
If you have further questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out.—
Kind regards,
Stefan
GetYourGuide Supplier Experience Team
I was really horrified about the blatant lack of professionality.
Did you make this mistake?
Never complain, but do research accurately and ask for consulting. 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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