How to get your tours into Google's 'Things to Do' carousel
Search “whitewater rafting trips Colorado” on Google. Before any organic results, you get a carousel of activities with photos, prices, and booking links. Most of those cards belong to Viator, GetYourGuide, or some other aggregator. The company that actually loads guests onto rafts and drives them to the put-in? Page two, maybe page one if they’re lucky.
That carousel is Google’s “Things to Do” feature. It appears across Google Search, Google Maps, and Google Travel any time someone searches for activities or experiences in a destination. It sits above organic results, which means it collects clicks before most travelers scroll past the ads. If your tours aren’t in it, you’re absent at the moment someone is deciding what to book.
What the things to do carousel actually is
Google Things to Do is a set of surfaces that display tour, activity, and attraction listings with pricing, photos, and links to booking pages. It shows up as a swipeable carousel on mobile, a card row on desktop, and as listing panels inside Maps and Google Travel.
The carousel competes directly with OTAs for search real estate. When it works for you, travelers click through to your site and book without a middleman. When you’re not in it, they click through to Viator instead, and you pay 20 to 25 percent commission on someone who was looking for exactly what you offer.
Google does not take a cut of free listings. That’s the whole thing. You connect your tours, travelers find them, they book directly through your site.
The two ways to get in
There are two distinct paths to appearing in the carousel. Most operators need both working together.
The first is through a connectivity partner. This is a booking platform like FareHarbor, Peek Pro, Rezdy, or Bókun that has a direct data feed into Google’s Actions Center. When you use one of these platforms for reservations, you can enable the Things to Do integration, and your tours get pushed into Google’s system. Your platform handles the API requirements. You configure which trips to include, add photos and pricing, and the platform does the rest. Most operators see their listings appear within two to four weeks.
The second path is the Operator Booking Module. Google launched this in 2023 so operators can display their products directly on their own Google Business Profile, without going through an OTA. When a traveler pulls up your listing on Maps or clicks your business in search results, they see your specific trips, prices, and a link straight to your booking page.
The Operator Booking Module requires a claimed and verified Google Business Profile with a complete address on file. If you don’t have that yet, start there before anything else.
Who qualifies
Google lists the eligible business types in its Actions Center documentation, and outdoor recreation operators fit in several of them. Adventure sports and tour agencies, outdoor activity organizers, ski resorts, and equipment rental services are all specifically named. Kayak outfitters, fly fishing guides, zip line operations, whitewater companies, surf schools, and horseback outfitters all qualify.
You don’t need a storefront. Operators with a service area are eligible. If your “office” is a gravel lot at the trailhead and your address is a PO box, you can still qualify as long as you have a verified Google Business Profile.
One thing worth knowing: if you’re already listed on an OTA, your trips may already appear in the carousel under the OTA’s branding. That’s not the same as being listed directly. When you connect through a connectivity partner or the Operator Booking Module, you appear as the source. FareHarbor’s integration even adds an “Official Site” badge to your listing, which tells travelers they’re booking with the operator, not through a platform.
What you need before you connect
Your Google Business Profile needs to be claimed, verified, and complete. This is the foundation everything else runs on. A GBP with a vague description and no address won’t support the Operator Booking Module, and your listing won’t show up in local searches the way it should. The setup guide for outfitters covers what to fill in.
Trip descriptions need to be complete and accurate before you push them to Google. Thin descriptions, missing pricing, or vague availability windows hurt your listing quality. Skip the generic phrasing (“half-day rafting on the river”) and include what’s actually included, the skill level required, the duration, and where guests meet you. That’s the data Google displays.
Photos matter more in this context than almost anywhere else online. The carousel is entirely visual. Google picks which photos to show, often pulling from both your GBP and what your booking platform sends. Use real shots of actual trips, minimum 500 pixels on the short side, no watermarks. Action shots of guests on the water consistently outperform scenic photos in click-through rate.
Your booking platform’s integration setting is usually in a connectivity or distribution section. FareHarbor, Peek Pro, Rezdy, and Bókun all support the Google Things to Do integration. If you take reservations by phone or through a basic contact form rather than a booking platform, you can still list through the Operator Booking Module by connecting your GBP to your website’s booking page directly.
How schema markup fits in
The carousel pulls primarily from booking platform data feeds, not from crawling your website. But schema markup still matters here.
TouristTrip and TouristAttraction schema on your trip pages tells Google you’re running bookable experiences, not writing editorial content about an activity. That context strengthens your overall local SEO signals and helps Google categorize your business correctly.
Schema markup also feeds Google’s AI Overviews and AI-generated travel responses. When someone asks Google’s AI “what are the best half-day rafting trips near Asheville,” the structured data on your site is part of what determines whether your trips get cited. The information in your schema and the information you feed through your booking platform should match closely.
How reviews and photos move your position
Review volume drives placement in the carousel. Google’s algorithm weighs both the count and the average rating. A trip with 80 reviews at 4.7 stars will rank above a trip with 12 reviews at 5.0 stars in most cases. That gap closes slowly. The best approach is consistent: ask every guest after their trip, give them a direct link to your review page, and respond to every review that comes in. The guide to getting more Google reviews lays out a system for this.
Pricing accuracy matters too. Google surfaces the price from your listing. If travelers arrive expecting one number and find another on your site, most of them leave. Accurate pricing in your listing also helps conversion since people coming from the carousel already know what they’re spending.
Keep your availability current. Stale calendars with blocked-out dates during your peak season suppress your listing. Most booking platforms sync availability automatically once the integration is set up correctly.
Your direct listing alongside ota listings
If your trips are already on Viator or GetYourGuide, those listings will also show up in the carousel. You may see your trips appearing multiple times: once under your direct listing and again under the OTA. That’s a fine position to be in.
Travelers searching the carousel see your name multiple times. Some will click the OTA out of habit. Others will click your direct listing when they see the “Official Site” badge, knowing they’re avoiding the platform markup. The more you put into your direct listing photos and descriptions, the better that second option looks by comparison. The full picture on competing with OTAs covers the broader strategy, but the Things to Do carousel is one of the few places where Google hands you a seat next to the aggregators for free.
The setup takes an afternoon if your booking platform is already in place. The operators who skip this aren’t missing a minor SEO detail. They’re paying commissions on customers who would have booked direct if they’d found them first. The carousel gets more prominent with each update Google runs to its travel surfaces, not less.
