u/rayabana

Something I've been wondering about lately:

A lot of attractions, museums, activities, and experiences sell tickets online through OTAs like GetYourGuide, Viator, Klook, etc.

But local tour guides already spend their days talking to travelers who are planning things to do. In theory, it feels like guides could also earn a bit of supplementary income by selling attraction tickets under their own brand, while also getting discovered by travelers who may later want a guided experience.

Yet I rarely see independent guides doing this.

For guides here: what's the biggest blocker?

• Not worth the effort?
• Technology/setup is too complicated?
• Travelers don't buy that way?
• Lack of awareness?
• Trust/branding concerns?
• Something else entirely?

Genuinely curious because from the outside it seems like a fairly natural extension of what many guides already do, but clearly there's a gap somewhere.

Would love to hear from guides, operators, or anyone who's tried this before. What am I missing?

Hey Bangalore,

Looking for plans this Saturday? We’re organizing a Pizza Treasure Hunt just ~70 kms outside the city, and we've got a few spots open!

The vibe is simple: we drive out, solve clues to find our pizza ingredients/rewards, and then fire up some DIY pizzas - yes, dough would be ready, but you will need to toss it.

• Who’s invited: Solo drivers, couples, families—anyone looking to get out of the city for a day.
• The Plan: We convoy/roll out from Bangalore at 9:00 AM, stop for some proper highway breakfast on the way, and then head to the location for the hunt and lunch. Later do a drive thru the forest and back by evening.
• Cost: Just splitting actual food/venue costs.

Drop a comment or DM me if you want in, and I’ll share the exact starting point and details. Let’s get out of the concrete jungle for a bit!

Note. Also on veg toppings to keep it simple.

Genuinely curious about this, not trying to sell anything — just trying to understand something that doesn't make sense to me from the outside.

There are apparently millions of travel YouTube videos out there, a huge chunk of them featuring specific tours, local experiences, cooking classes, boat trips, walking tours, you name it. And a lot of travelers apparently use YouTube heavily when they're planning a trip — not just for destination inspiration but for the "what should I actually do there" question.

So my question to people who actually run tours or experiences: has a YouTube video about your tour ever translated into real bookings? And if so, how did that even happen — did the creator reach out to you? Did you pitch them? Was there any kind of agreement, or did they just show up, film, and you found out later?

And on the flip side: have you ever had a creator film your tour and it just... did nothing? Or worse, caused a headache?

I'm also curious about the economics from your side. If a travel creator with, say, 8,000 subscribers made a genuinely good video about your tour, would you even want to know about it? Would you pay for that kind of content — or is the whole "exposure" thing something you've been burned on enough times that it's just not interesting anymore?

The thing I'm trying to get my head around: it seems like there's a real mismatch between creators who'd love a sustainable relationship with operators, and operators who'd love consistent content but have no easy way to find the right people or know what it's actually worth. Is that actually true from where you sit, or am I misreading it?

Any experience — good, bad, "it was complicated" — is genuinely useful. Thanks for reading this far.

BTW, I flipped the question and just posted to Travel Tubers too to find out what's their POV.

Note to mods: I don't post here often and I realise this sits on the edge of what the sub is for. If this crosses a line or belongs somewhere else, please just remove it — I won't take it personally. Appreciate you keeping the community useful.

Long post, sorry. I'll try to keep it useful.

I've been going down a rabbit hole lately trying to understand how travel creators — especially channels under 50k — actually make money from the content they put out. Not just ad revenue (we all know how bleak that is before you hit the Partner threshold), but specifically from the tours, cooking classes, day trips, boat rides, whatever it is you feature in your videos.

The thing that's been bugging me: you film a 15-minute video about a food tour in, say, Naples. That video might genuinely send 50 or 500 people to go book that exact experience. But as far as I can tell, you're either:

1. dropping a GetYourGuide or Viator affiliate link in the description and hoping someone clicks it before the 30-day cookie dies, or
2. not monetising that at all

And even with GYG/Viator links — is anyone actually converting? Like, do viewers click description links for tours the way they click Amazon links for gear? I genuinely don't know and I can't find real data on this, only vague "affiliate income is possible!" blog posts written by people trying to sell a course.

What I'm also curious about: has anyone ever had a direct relationship with a local tour operator? Not a big OTA, but the actual person running the tour — where they knew you were making a video and it became some kind of ongoing thing? Did that ever lead to anything sustainable, or was it just a one-time "come do our tour free" deal that went nowhere?

I'm asking because I'm trying to figure out whether the "creator recommends → viewer books" pipeline is actually broken, or whether I'm just missing how people are making it work. There's clearly intent there — someone watching a 12-minute video about Istanbul food tours is probably going to Istanbul (I know I wanted to pitch ice cream theatrics here) — but I can't figure out where that intent actually goes at the end.

Would love to hear from anyone who's actually tried to monetise this properly, or who's had it completely fail. Both stories are useful to me.

Note to mods: I'm not a regular here and I genuinely don't know if this kind of question fits the sub. If it's off-topic or too vague, please remove it and I'll take the hint — no hard feelings at all. Just trying to have an honest conversation.