Skift Travel News Blog

Short stories and posts about the daily news happenings around the travel industry.

Tour Operators

Klook’s New Animal Welfare Policy Puts Cruelty-Free Experiences in Focus

3 months ago

Online travel marketplace Klook is ending the sale of certain exploitative wildlife attractions on its platform, with a new animal welfare policy, set to come into effect on 31 October.

The experiences platform will stop selling circus-style performances involving elephants, dolphins, and tigers, animal shows performances, and animal-photo experiences. It has since removed experiences for Miami Seaquarium and Sea Life Park Hawaii, according to a statement by World Animal Protection.

“Klook must go further,” said Nicole Barrantes, Wildlife Campaign Manager, World Animal Protection, “It must remove all wildlife attractions, including its elephant bathing and feeding offerings, which still involve significant cruelty behind the scenes.”

Klook was pinpointed as enabling animal interactions in a WAP Tracking the Travel Industry report released in February, tying with Groupon for the lowest score in the sector. World Animal Protection stated that companies assessed were given feedback and a timeframe within which to report back as well as put into effect any necessary changes to improve their offering and overall responsible tourism weighting. It had not received any feedback or policy changes from Groupon, as yet.

Online Travel

Booking.com Adds Klook To Its Roster of Activities Providers

1 year ago

Booking.com expanded the geographic reach of its tours and activities offerings in Asia by entering a long-term strategic partnership with Klook, Booking.com announced Monday.

Madame Tussauds Singapore source Merlin Entertainments
The set of a Bollywood movie at Madame Tussauds Singapore. Travelers can buy tickets to this attraction and have their reservations instantly confirmed via Klook, an online travel agency that specializes in experiences. Madame Source: Merlin Entertainments

“Klook experiences are now live in over 175 cities, across over 30 markets on Booking.com, and the majority of these are available in Asia and Oceania,” Booking.com stated as it cited Klook as “the category leader for experiences in Asia.”

Booking.com is headquartered in Amsterdam, and Klook is based in Singapore.

Booking.com already had provider agreements with TUI’s Musement, based in Europe, and Tripadvisor’s Viator, which is headquartered in the U.S.

Booking.com sister company Priceline last week announced that it, too, hooked up with Musement to access tours and activities.

Tour Operators

Tours and Activities Companies Launch Standards Association

1 year ago

Nearly three dozen tours and activities operators, reservation systems, and distributors debuted a non-profit association geared to formulate connectivity standards.

Source: Reuters

The 501c3 association, Open Connectivity for Tours, Activities & Attractions intends to promote an open source specification “to enable reservation and ticketing system providers and tour, activity and attraction ticket sellers to connect their systems for more efficient distribution,” the group announced Tuesday.

Founding members of the group include Arival, Checkfront, Gateway Ticketing Systems, Go City, Holibob, Peek, Tiqets, TUI Musement, Ventrata, Xola and Zaui.

Several major booking platforms, including Viator, GetYourGuide, Klook, Booking.com and Expedia weren’t part of the launch announcement.

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