How to compete with Viator and GetYourGuide as a small outfitter

Search “kayaking tours Kona” on Google. The first three organic results are Viator, GetYourGuide, and TripAdvisor. The outfitter who actually paddles that coastline every morning? Page two, maybe. If they’re lucky.

That’s been the story for years. But something shifted in 2025.

Google’s AI Overviews started answering travel queries on the search results page. Organic click-through rates for those queries dropped 61% in a single year. Bad for everyone who depends on traditional search traffic, yes. But worse for OTAs than for you. A study of Google’s AI Mode found that 56% of booking flows completed directly with suppliers. Fewer than 10% went through OTAs.

AI search cites the source. For a kayaking tour in Kona, the source is the outfitter, not the middleman listing 300,000 experiences.

You still have to earn that citation. But the odds shifted.

The real cost of OTA dependence

Viator charges operators 20 to 25% commission on every booking. GetYourGuide takes 20 to 30%. On a $150 rafting trip for a group of four, that’s $120 to $180 going to the platform. Across a full season, you’re looking at tens of thousands of dollars in commissions.

Those numbers are getting bigger, not smaller. OTAs accounted for 37% of all tour and activity bookings in 2025, up from 33% the year before and 28% in 2023. Direct website bookings for operators dropped from 29% to 25% in the same period.

Every year you wait to build a direct channel, the platforms take a larger slice.

You also lose the customer. Every booking through Viator is a customer Viator owns. No email. No follow-up. No review on your Google profile. No invitation back next season.

Direct bookings average $519 per reservation. OTA bookings average $320. Some of that gap is commission, but not all of it. Direct customers tend to spend more because they chose you specifically, not because you were third on a list of twelve kayak tours.

Win the searches OTAs can’t touch

Start with your own name. When someone types your business name into Google, you should own every result on that page. If “Mountain River Outfitters” returns a Viator listing before your own site, you’re paying 20% commission on someone who already knew your name. Make sure your site is optimized for your business name, your Google Business Profile links to your website, and you have enough content to hold authority on your own brand. That fix takes a week, not a month.

Then go after the searches OTAs will never target.

Viator ranks for “kayaking tours Kona.” They’ll never rank for “what to expect kayaking the Keauhou coast in December” or “best time to see manta rays from a kayak.” They don’t create that content. They can’t, because they don’t run the trips.

You can write what they can’t. Condition reports. Seasonal guides. Trip comparisons that go deeper than any platform listing, because you’ve actually run the trip.

Cascade Raft and Kayak in Idaho has been running Payette River trips since 1985. Their site ranks for river-specific searches that no OTA bothers targeting, because no one at Viator headquarters knows what the water levels look like in May versus August. Front Royal Outdoors on the Shenandoah does the same thing for Virginia paddlers.

Build your local keyword approach around the long-tail queries platforms ignore:

• “[activity] [specific river or trail] [month]” and “best time to [activity] in [area]”
• “[activity] conditions [location] this week” and “is [activity] worth it in [season]”

These searches attract someone further along in their decision. They’re past browsing. They want specifics that only an operator can provide.

Why AI search changes the equation

We wrote about OTA competition last year and didn’t mention AI search at all. That was a miss.

About 40% of travelers used AI tools for trip planning in 2025. For millennials and Gen Z, closer to 60%. Those people aren’t scrolling through ten blue links. They’re asking a question and reading whatever the AI cites back to them.

Google’s AI Overviews are pulling information from the web and presenting it directly. When those overviews cite your content, you get 35% more organic clicks than brands that aren’t cited. When they don’t cite you, your traffic drops off a cliff.

For a small outfitter, this is the part that matters: AI tends to cite original, specific content about a place and an experience. A Viator listing with a generic description and stock photos doesn’t give AI much to pull from. A detailed page about water conditions on your river in June, written by someone who’s been running that stretch for fifteen years? That’s exactly the kind of thing it cites.

OTAs are still strong on generic searches. “Things to do in Moab” will return Viator and GetYourGuide for a long time. But the specific, intent-rich queries that actually lead to bookings are shifting toward the operators themselves. That’s where you need to be.

Make direct booking the obvious choice

Once someone lands on your website, booking direct has to feel easier and better than going to Viator.

Price it right. If your direct price matches your OTA price after their markup, you’re leaving money on the table. Many operators price direct bookings 10 to 15% below their OTA rate. You’re not discounting. You’re keeping the margin that would have gone to the platform. A $150 trip on Viator can be $130 on your site, and you still make more per booking.

Make it work on a phone. The booking process has to be fast and clean on mobile. If your checkout takes five taps and feels clunky, people leave and book on Viator where they know the process works. This isn’t optional. It’s the single biggest conversion factor for direct bookings.

Offer what the platform can’t. Pre-trip materials, group accommodations, package deals, a direct line to the guide. Viator can’t do any of that. Wilderness River Outfitters in Idaho runs multi-day wilderness trips where every detail requires coordination. That kind of experience doesn’t work through a marketplace checkout. “Book direct and get” is a simple message. Put it on the booking page.

Build an audience the platforms can’t take from you

Every direct booking gives you a customer’s email. That email becomes a post-trip follow-up. The follow-up becomes a review request. The reviews help your local rankings. And over time, the email list becomes your off-season marketing channel and your source of repeat bookings.

Over three to five years, a list of past customers is one of the most valuable things a small outfitter can own. It costs almost nothing to maintain, and no algorithm change or commission increase can take it away.

Start with every direct booking and every walk-in. Send a follow-up with photos and a review link within 48 hours of the trip. Send one seasonal email before your peak season opens. Build the list even when it feels small. A hundred emails from real past customers who loved their trip will outperform any OTA listing.

Use OTAs on your terms

Don’t quit Viator. Just stop depending on it.

International travelers and first-time visitors search on platforms. Let them find you there. Your job is making sure the next time they look, they go to your site.

Put your slow inventory on the OTAs. That Tuesday afternoon departure with empty seats? Viator listing. Peak Saturday morning? Direct bookings, full margin.

If more than half your bookings come through platforms, your direct channel needs work. A healthy mix for most small operators is somewhere around 60 to 70% direct.

After the trip, mention your website. A card in the gear bag. A word from the guide. A follow-up email that says “next time, book with us directly at [your site] for the best rate.” You can’t offer discounts to redirect OTA customers, since that violates platform terms. But you can make sure they know how to find you next year.

The window is open

Viator and GetYourGuide will keep growing. Their combined market share is still under 10% of all tours and activities, but they’re climbing. Their ad budgets will get bigger. Their reach will expand.

But how people search for trips is changing underneath them. AI sends people to the source, not to marketplaces. For the first time, a small operator with good content, a fast site, and a working booking process has a real advantage in how search works.

French Broad Outfitters in Asheville didn’t build their local search presence by outspending Viator. They built it by being the obvious answer to specific questions about paddling the French Broad River. That’s the kind of content Viator will never create, because Viator doesn’t paddle the French Broad.

The question is whether you build your direct channel now, while AI search is still shaking up the old rankings, or keep paying 25% to a platform that treats your trip like one of 300,000 listings.