How to Get More Reviews on Viator and GetYourGuide
The request is already automated. What happens before it lands is the part you control.
A new listing with no reviews sits next to a competitor with four hundred. Same destination, similar tour, possibly a better product — and almost no chance of being chosen. Reviews are the hardest thing to shortcut on these platforms and the single biggest lever on both ranking and conversion.
Most advice on this topic tells you to send review request emails. On Viator and GetYourGuide that advice is largely redundant, for reasons worth understanding before you build anything.
Why reviews decide what you sell
Reviews work twice: they influence where you appear, and they decide whether anyone books once they find you. Both platforms treat review volume and score as ranking signals, and both treat them as the primary trust mechanism for a traveller choosing between strangers.
Two platform-specific details matter here. Because Viator belongs to Tripadvisor, reviews there carry the weight of a long-established verification system, and reputation built on one side works across both. On GetYourGuide, a supplier-level Provider Rating aggregates review scores across all your activities and is used to give credibility to new listings that have none of their own — with an individual activity beginning to show its own average once it has three reviews.
That Provider Rating mechanic is worth planning around. A strong review record does not just help the product that earned it — it makes every future product you launch easier to sell. Which means the reviews you gather this season are an asset for tours you have not built yet.
Two rules that change the approach
First: only verified bookers can review. Both platforms accept reviews solely from travellers who booked and completed the activity through them. A guest who booked directly with you cannot leave a Viator review, however happy they are. Your platform review volume is therefore capped by your platform booking volume — and no amount of asking changes that ceiling.
Second: the platforms already send the request. Viator and Tripadvisor solicit reviews automatically on your behalf when someone books through them, and GetYourGuide prompts its own bookers too. The email you were planning to build already exists and is already going out.
Together those two facts move the whole job upstream. You are not trying to generate a request; you are trying to make sure that when the request arrives, the guest already intends to write something. Nearly everything that works happens before they leave you.
When and how to prompt guests
The moment that matters is the end of the tour, in person, while the experience is still immediate. A guide asking directly outperforms any automated message, because the guest is thanking a person rather than deleting an email three days later.
- Ask specifically. "If you enjoyed today, a review on Viator genuinely helps us" works. "Don't forget to review us" does not — it sounds like a script and gets treated like one.
- Name the platform they booked on. Guests rarely remember, so guides should know which channel each booking came from before the tour starts.
- Remove the friction. A QR code on a card, or a tablet offered at the end, converts far better than asking someone to find an email later.
- Ask when the day has gone well. Reading the moment is not manipulation; a guest who had a difficult experience needs a conversation, not a review request.
Make it a standard part of the tour close rather than something guides remember occasionally. Operators who script the last two minutes of the experience — thank you, here is how to review, here is how to book directly next time — get materially more of both.
What you cannot do: incentivise. Offering a discount, an upgrade or anything else in exchange for a review breaches platform policy on both, and conditioning a reward on a positive review is worse. Asking is fine. Paying is not, and listings have been removed over it.
What to automate
Since the platforms handle the request itself, automate the things around it instead:
- The pre-tour experience. Confirmations and reminders that set expectations accurately prevent the disappointment that produces mediocre reviews.
- Guide briefings. A manifest showing which channel each guest booked through, so the ask names the right platform.
- Your own follow-up for direct bookings, where no platform is sending anything — a thank-you and a link to wherever you want that review to land.
- A weekly check of new reviews across both platforms, so responses happen within days rather than whenever someone remembers.
One caution on volume: a guest who books through a platform is already receiving that platform's request. Adding your own on top makes you the second email about the same thing, which reads as pestering rather than diligence.
Responding to reviews
Reply to all of them. The audience is not the reviewer — it is every future traveller reading the listing and working out what you are like when something goes wrong.
Good reviews
Keep it short and specific. Referencing something from their actual day shows a real person is reading, where a copy-pasted thank-you across forty reviews achieves the opposite. Note which details guests keep praising: those are the words that sell your tour, and they belong in your listing description.
Bad reviews
Answer factually, without arguing. Acknowledge what went wrong, correct anything genuinely inaccurate in one calm sentence, and say what you have changed. A defensive reply does more damage than the review; a measured one often reads better to prospective guests than an unbroken wall of five stars.
Both platforms have processes for removing reviews that breach their guidelines — abusive content, or feedback about something outside your control. Operators report the two differ in how readily they side with the supplier in genuinely grey cases, so use the process where you have grounds, and treat a disappointing but honest review as feedback rather than something to be fought.
Using reviews as marketing assets
Reviews earned on a platform can work well beyond it, with one boundary worth respecting: the review content belongs to the platform and the person who wrote it, not to you. Where an official widget or badge is offered, use it. Lifting review text wholesale onto your own site is a different matter.
- Collect your own testimonials in parallel. Ask guests directly for a line you can use on your website, and you own it outright.
- Let reviews rewrite your copy. The phrases guests use are better marketing language than anything written in an office.
- Use ratings as proof on your own site. Displaying your score and review count, with a link to the source, builds trust for direct bookings without republishing anyone's words.
- Feed them back into operations. Recurring complaints are a product brief. The meeting point nobody can find is a review problem with an operational fix.
Reviews are also the clearest evidence you have in a commission negotiation — a strong score and low cancellation rate are exactly what an account manager is looking for.
How Travelity helps
Most of what raises review volume is operational rather than clever. Travelity keeps every booking and its source in one place, so the day's manifest tells guides which platform each guest arrived through — which is what makes the end-of-tour ask specific instead of generic.
Automated confirmations and reminders set expectations before the day starts, and guest records from every channel make the follow-up on your direct bookings straightforward.
Frequently asked questions
Can I ask customers who booked elsewhere to review me on Viator?
No. Both Viator and GetYourGuide only accept reviews from travellers who booked and completed the activity through their own platform. A guest who booked directly with you cannot leave a review there, which is why your platform review volume is capped by your platform booking volume.
Do I need to send my own review request emails?
Not for platform bookings. Viator and Tripadvisor solicit reviews automatically on your behalf when a customer books through them, and GetYourGuide prompts its own bookers too. Your influence sits upstream of that email — in whether the guest finishes the tour intending to write something.
Can I offer a discount in exchange for a review?
No. Incentivising reviews breaches platform policy on both, and conditioning any reward on a positive review is worse still. You can ask guests to review, remind them, and make it easy — you cannot pay for it in money, discounts or upgrades.
How many reviews does a new listing need?
On GetYourGuide, an activity begins showing its own average rating once it has three reviews, and until then a supplier-level Provider Rating drawn from your other activities helps carry it. That makes the first handful on any new product disproportionately valuable, and it means an established review record helps every product you launch afterwards.
Should I respond to negative reviews?
Yes, to all of them. The audience for your reply is not the reviewer but every future traveller reading the listing and deciding whether you can be trusted when something goes wrong. Answer factually, avoid arguing the details, and say what you changed.
Can I republish OTA reviews on my own website?
Treat platform review content as belonging to the platform and the reviewer rather than to you. Where a platform offers an official widget or badge, use that. Otherwise the safer approach is to collect testimonials directly from guests for your own site, which you own outright.
Bottom line
You cannot manufacture platform reviews and you do not need to send the request — the platforms handle that, and only people who booked through them can respond to it. What you control is everything before the email lands: an experience worth writing about, and a guide who asks properly in the last two minutes of it.
Then reply to everything that arrives, let recurring praise rewrite your listing copy, and treat recurring complaints as a to-do list. On GetYourGuide in particular, the record you build now travels to every product you launch later.
Related guides
See Travelity in action. Book a Personalized Demo.
30 minutes that can completely change the way you run your travel business. See how Travelity can help you work smarter, sell more, and operate with less stress.