“I don’t believe in stereotypes.”
At GetYourGuide’s second Unlocked Summit in Asia, held in Bangkok, COO and co-founder Tao Tao said Asia Pacific has been the company’s fastest-growing region for the last two quarters, and that growth isn’t coming off a small base. Thailand is currently the number one destination in Asia on the platform. It’s a notable result, given that the company bet big on the region right after the pandemic, when Japan had been closed off for three years. Tao Tao, who grew up in Germany with roots in China, challenges the stereotype that Asian travellers only want big tour groups and quick photo stops. What he’s seeing in the data says otherwise.
In this WiT Studio session, shot in Bangkok, Tao Tao explains why the “selfie-hotspot” Asian traveller is a myth, why AI may not be the threat everyone fears, and what happens when a booking giant starts telling cities which tours to ban.
When asked how GetYourGuide plans to survive in the age of ChatGPT and Gemini, Tao Tao says the answer lies in a quirk of AI that most people overlook. He also shares a prediction about how AI agents will eventually make money, and why he thinks that’s good news for marketplaces. Meanwhile, the company is wading into sensitive waters, mainly concerning overtourism. In Florence, GetYourGuide banned an entire category of tours at the city’s request. In Italy, it helped reopen an ancient city to visitors. And Tao Tao, an economist by training, argues that some cities rely on tourism for a fifth of their income, so what, exactly, is the alternative? He also explains why a city like Tokyo could absorb far more visitors than anyone thinks, if only we solved one very specific problem.
Tao Tao also lays out the company’s growth ‘chapters’, from finding product-market fit to surviving the pandemic years, to what he calls the next big shift in how we choose where to go. He also drops a statistic about how many travellers pick a country because of what there is to do and reveals what those travellers do differently once they get there.
Watch the full interview:
