Beyond Flights and Hotels – Does the Future of Tour Operating Lie in the Stay?
Summary
This panel at ITB Berlin 2026, moderated by Marianna Evenstein, explored whether the future of tour operating is shifting from selling travel logistics (flights, hotels) to curating and delivering in-destination experiences — 'the stay.' The panel featured Dr. Klaus-Ulrich Sperl (CEO of destination management companies at Dare Tour Group), Nithya Ramesh (Regional Director Europe, Product & Marketing at Trip.com Group), Tobias Boese (CEO of Vivido, an independent digital-first tour operator), and Peter Ulwahn (CEO of TUI Amusement, TUI's experiences platform).
The central thesis was unanimous: the in-destination experience has become the primary driver of customer satisfaction and brand differentiation, while flights and hotels are increasingly commoditized infrastructure. The tours and experiences market is growing faster than hotels and flights combined, as cited by Peter Ulwahn. TUI Amusement sold 10 million experiences in the past year, 4.5 million of which were produced and delivered by TUI itself — a figure Ulwahn used to underscore that scale and seamless delivery are equally critical.
A key structural tension the panel addressed is the booking window: historically, in-destination activities were either pre-loaded into tour operator systems or booked spontaneously on the ground. Today, both extremes coexist. Some travelers book experiences 12 months in advance to secure availability (especially for high-demand or once-in-a-lifetime activities), while others want same-day, weather-dependent spontaneity. Peter Ulwahn noted that only 28% of the experiences industry is currently digitalized, with the remaining 72% still offline — a critical gap that prevents real-time availability, instant confirmation, and last-minute bookings.
Nithya Ramesh described Trip.com's strategic response: investing heavily in discoverability and AI-assisted decision-making tools to combat 'decision fatigue' — the overwhelming volume of choices travelers face across social media and multiple booking platforms. She highlighted that Asian travelers use AI tools both pre-trip and during travel, while European users predominantly rely on AI only pre-booking, reflecting meaningful behavioral and cultural differences at scale.
Tobias Boese positioned Vivido's differentiation around multi-stop itineraries and curated accommodation variety, arguing that 'the experience' is not just activities but the overall shape of a trip — combining destination switching with unique lodging to create a holistic stay experience. He also introduced the concept of the 'connected trip' as the most underserved opportunity in the industry: seamlessly bundling flights, transfers, multiple hotels, rental cars, and experiences into one coherent, frictionless journey. He cautioned that this cannot yet be left entirely to AI, as misplanning in package itineraries becomes very expensive.
Dr. Sperl stressed authenticity as a key demand driver, noting that Dare Tour Group employs scouts in destinations like India who do nothing but search for novel, market-exclusive experiences — which typically provide a competitive advantage for one to two years before competitors copy them. He also pointed out that experience booking behavior is destination-specific: city trips (e.g., the Louvre in Paris) require advance booking due to capacity constraints, while weather-dependent outdoor experiences are better left for on-site decision-making.
The panel agreed that the 'paradox of choice' is a real challenge: travelers want curation and personalization, not endless options. Experiences reveal more about customer profiles than hotel star ratings — a foodie booking a cooking class tells operators far more about preferences than a generic 4-star hotel booking — enabling deeper personalization loops. AI and data are seen as the key enablers of true '1-to-1 marketing' at scale.
Looking five years ahead, panelists predicted the winning tour operators will be those who: unveil the world's beauty to individual customers (Sperl); speed up decision-making for travelers (Ramesh); orchestrate diverse trip components in a personalized way (Boese); and ensure the entire trip is seamlessly booked and delivered (Ulwahn).
Key Takeaways
- •The tours and experiences market is growing faster than hotels and flights, signaling a structural shift in where value is created in the travel industry — as stated by Peter Ulwahn (TUI Amusement).
- •TUI Amusement sold 10 million experiences in the past year, with 4.5 million produced and delivered by TUI itself, demonstrating that scale and delivery quality are inseparable in the experience economy.
- •Only 28% of the experiences industry is currently digitalized — the other 72% operates offline, which prevents real-time availability, instant confirmation, and last-minute spontaneous bookings. Peter Ulwahn described this as 'the push the industry needs to take.'
- •Trip.com's Nithya Ramesh identified 'decision fatigue' as the central user problem: travelers face so many sources of information (social media, review sites, OTAs) that streamlining discoverability has become Trip.com's primary product focus, addressed through AI tools.
- •Asian travelers use AI tools both pre-trip and during travel; European users restrict AI-assisted search primarily to the pre-booking phase — a behavioral difference Trip.com has observed across its global user data.
- •Dr. Sperl introduced the concept of destination-specific booking logic: high-demand, capacity-constrained attractions (e.g., the Louvre) should be booked far in advance, while weather-dependent outdoor experiences are better left for on-site decision-making.
- •Tobias Boese identified the 'connected trip' — seamlessly combining multiple hotels, destinations, experiences, transfers, and rental cars — as the most underserved opportunity in the industry, noting that it cannot yet be fully delegated to AI due to the cost of misplanning in package itineraries.
- •TUI Amusement data shows that tour operator customers who participate in an experience during their trip report higher satisfaction and stronger loyalty and repeat rates than those who do not — quantifying the business case for experience integration.
Transcript
All right, ladies and gentlemen, hello. Welcome to all of you. If you're just joining us at the blue stage, it's wonderful to see so many people here at the ITB 2026. My name is Mariana Evstein and I'm really excited to be guiding you all through what I think is going to be a very interesting conversation. So, I was actually just thinking on the way here, whenever, you know, we ask a friend or a colleague or a relative about a vacation they took or a trip that they were on, they almost never tel...
