Experience Marketplace

Experience marketplaces connect travelers with local tours, activities, and immersive experiences, serving a $300+ billion global market that remains one of the last major travel categories with low digital penetration. While 70%+ of flights and 60%+ of hotels are booked online, tours and activities digital penetration sits at approximately 20%, creating an enormous runway for marketplace growth.

GetYourGuide crossed $1.2 billion in revenue and became profitable for the first time in 2025, recording 10 million experiences booked in Q3 alone. Yet even with this scale, the market remains extraordinarily fragmented: major OTAs like GetYourGuide and Viator hold less than 15% combined market share, meaning 85%+ of experience bookings still happen through direct operator websites, walk-ups, and hotel concierge desks. Klook raised $200 million in April 2025 to develop merchant SaaS solutions and expand in Asia-Pacific, having raised $1 billion+ lifetime from SoftBank and Goldman Sachs.

The experience marketplace model differs fundamentally from flight and hotel booking. Experiences are inherently local, diverse, and personality-driven: a food tour in Barcelona, a scuba dive in Thailand, and a Broadway show in New York have nothing in common except that travelers want them. This diversity makes aggregation both the opportunity (consumers need a single platform to discover options) and the challenge (each experience type requires different booking flows, cancellation policies, and quality assurance).

For founders in 2026, the experience marketplace landscape offers clear opportunities despite the presence of well-funded leaders. Operator-side technology (booking systems, payment processing, marketing tools for the millions of small tour operators worldwide) is severely undersupplied. Niche experience categories (adventure travel, wellness retreats, culinary experiences, accessible experiences for travelers with disabilities) can build communities that mass-market platforms serve poorly. AI-powered experience recommendation that goes beyond 'top 10 things to do' to genuinely personalized, context-aware suggestions represents the next interface evolution. And the corporate experiences market (team building, client entertainment, incentive travel) is a high-value segment with different purchasing dynamics than leisure travel.