GetYourGuide Tours

Welcome to the Forum! I hope you'll stick around!

You may not have realized but GetYourGuide tours as well as Viator are both 3rd party aggregators. They don't actually run the tours but contract with those who do. Not sure you would have had better experiences if you'd booked directly with the provider although one never knows.

On Viator you can see who is actually running the tour and book with them. I haven't looked at the GetYourGuide booking page to see if that information is available or not.

Where were you that your tours were cancelled?

To be canceled with no advance notice is inexcusable. You were left high and dry. What a disappointment.
I don't think that it's just GetYourGuide that does this. They all attempt to get plum tickets that everyone wants, such as the Colosseum Underground Tour. I looked at buying those tickets with either them or another tour group (forget which one) but read the fine print and emailed them for details. They were very quick to respond and forthcoming: you must keep your entire day open in case your preferred time, for what you actually have a ticket, does not become available. You must also accept the "next best thing" to your preferred ticket such as no underground but attic, instead. Anyway, it was just too much, so I didn't get those tickets.
Would you mind sharing what events didn't work for you?

Getyourguide has suppliers that list tours on their website. They market those tours . Get your guide gets commission for each tour booked on their platform so they operate as agent. The tour operator has a right to cancel a tour if they see that they can't handle. But money you pay to get your guide is secured. They only pay their suppliers after completion of the tour.

I will advise to avoid booking some African safaris through Getyourguide because they have option of book now pay later, so they give client upto 72 hours to make payment which will not be possible with some African safaris as its required early payment for example gorilla trekking in Uganda where gorilla permits are paid for in advance.

I hope that helps.

@Lindy...that is interesting! I knew many tour companies in Rome sell tickets to Colosseum tours when they themselves don't actually have tickets in hand. I didn't realize the other parameters. Thanks for posting your experience.

Thank you for your post. I rarely use tours for myself, but I see so many folks that reserve with Viator and GetYourGuide. Like was said above they are 3rd party sites. They don't provide the tour, they take a portion of the proceeds from the guides that actually provide the service. Many times I see posts or hear of people that had tours booked thru getyourguide or Viator and then the tour was canceled. Then others will pipe in that they've used these 3rd party sites and never had a problem, until they do. I know one of the issues is that 3rd party sites AND tour guides themselves, sell tours before they've acquired tickets. Ticket competition can be fierce, and tours are cancelled because tickets can not be procured. Perhaps, its not all the 3rd party sites and guides' fault. Often, travelers want to book tours far in advance when tickets for the sites aren't being sold yet. In any case, I'm sorry this happened to you. For some cities and tourist sites, I find that doing my own "tour" by using a guidebook with notes on specific sites or walking tours to be much preferable, anyway. I often like to linger or spend more time than what is allocated by a guide.

You might find that this forum can be very helpful for a wide variety of travel questions. I will often read posts for the country(ies) I'm visiting and frequently gain helpful information.

Thats unfortunate and would have thought uncommon. Ive used them a few time over the years with no issues, but believe you completely.

We recently visited Milan and seeing The Last Supper was a bucket list item. Try as I may I could not book tickets through the official site. I waited until the exact time then, nada, sold out. I had to resort to a third party (I suspect they scoop up the tickets). First was Walks which is affiliated with Devour Tours a company we’ve used several times with success. Booked well in advance then they wanted to move the time and date about 2 weeks before we arrived. Did not work so they refunded the money. Went to GetYour Guide and booked for considerably more $$ but, hey, what can you do. A week before we depart they cancel. Went on their site and saw another guide for the time and date we wanted (even more $$ !) and booked. We joked hoping Leonards estate was getting a cut! Lesson: book directly if you can but, even then, be as flexible as possible for these high demand/limited access sojourns. BTW, seeing The Last Supper was worth it, and Milan was a pleasant surprise.

"Try as I may I could not book tickets through the official site. I waited until the exact time then, nada, sold out. I had to resort to a third party (I suspect they scoop up the tickets)"

Yes, I think that this is why many go with 3rd party outfits even though we're enabling the very ones who make it impossible to get tickets :( I'm guessing they have some sort of algorithm that just beats our little fingers desperately trying to plug in numbers at 2 a.m.