How to Get More Reviews on Viator and GetYourGuide
To get more reviews on Viator and GetYourGuide, add three things to the emails both platforms already send: a personal ask at the high point of the experience, a one-tap route to the review form, and a review rate you track for each product. The platform emails arrive after the moment has passed. The ask that works happens while the guest is still with you.
Viator emails guests the day after the experience, then on day three and day 30. GetYourGuide sends its own invitation and reminders. By the time either one lands, your guest is at dinner, on a train or already home, sorting photos from four other activities. Whether they review you was mostly decided in your last ten minutes together.
You probably already know reviews matter. What’s harder to find is exactly what each platform gives you to collect them, where each review ends up, and where the rules stop. This guide covers all three for both platforms, as of October 2026. For the wider system (replies, removals, the law), see our pillar guide to managing reviews on OTA platforms.
Key Takeaways
- Both platforms already ask every guest for a review; Viator sends up to three emails and a text, GetYourGuide sends an invitation plus reminders. Your job is the ask they can’t make: in person, at the high point.
- GetYourGuide gives you a review QR code and link for every activity under Performance > Reviews > Collect more reviews. Use the code in person and the link in follow-up messages.
- Viator’s Request Reviews tool lets you ask guests who didn’t book on Viator. Those reviews go to your TripAdvisor product page and count towards your Viator rating, but Viator says verified-booker reviews matter more for programmes like Accelerate.
- GetYourGuide’s October 2026 supplier terms ban friends-and-family bookings made to generate reviews, along with incentives, review gating and pressure on guests.
- Track your review rate (reviews ÷ completed bookings) per product and per platform. Raising it from 8% to 12% means 50% more reviews with no extra bookings.
What Viator and GetYourGuide Already Do for You
Before adding anything, know what’s already running. Both platforms collect reviews automatically, but they work differently and send reviews to different places, much as they differ on commission and audience (see our Viator vs GetYourGuide comparison).
| GetYourGuide | Viator | |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic requests | Review invitation plus reminders after the activity | Up to 3 emails and 1 text: the day after (email and text), day 3 and day 30. Reminders stop once the guest reviews |
| Who can review on the platform | Only customers who booked and completed the activity through GetYourGuide | Only Viator bookers can review on a Viator product page |
| Your collection tools | Review QR code and shareable review link per activity | Request Reviews tool (email) and a TripAdvisor review widget for your website |
| Where your extra reviews land | On the GetYourGuide activity page | On your TripAdvisor product page or listing |
| What counts towards your rating | GetYourGuide reviews only; reviews from other platforms aren’t imported | Review counts and ratings combine Viator and TripAdvisor submissions |
| (As of October 2026. Check your Supplier Portal or Management Center for current settings.) |
The gap in both systems is timing. An email the next morning competes with everything else in a traveller’s inbox. A guide saying “this takes two minutes, and it helps us more than you’d think” at the viewpoint, with a QR code in hand, doesn’t.
How to Get More Reviews on GetYourGuide
To get more reviews on GetYourGuide, create a review QR code and link for every activity, ask in person at the high point of the experience, ask a specific question rather than for “a review”, keep your Provider Rating above 4.0 so new activities launch with your track record, and ask your account manager about the Creator Review beta.
GetYourGuide’s own data shows why the first reviews matter so much. According to its supplier Growth Hub, three reviews can triple a new activity’s conversion rate. Going from zero to 15 reviews can increase page views 10 times and bookings 4.5 times, and each new review adds less after about 30. These are the platform’s figures, not independent research, but the direction matches what operators see.
1. Set up a review QR code and link for every activity
Your GetYourGuide review QR code lives in the Supplier Portal. Go to Performance > Reviews > Collect more reviews, choose an activity, and download the QR code or copy the review link. Each code is unique to one activity, and scanning it takes the guest straight to the review form for their booking.
Make one for every activity, not just your best seller. Then put the codes where guests will see them at the right moment:
- a pocket card the guide hands out, or the back of a lanyard
- tickets, receipts and thank-you cards
- exit signage and screens at an attraction
- seat-backs on a bus or boat
GetYourGuide’s own advice on review QR codes and links is to use the codes for in-person moments and the link for follow-up messages, such as a WhatsApp message after an adventure activity.
2. Time the ask to the experience
The right moment depends on what you run. GetYourGuide suggests:
- Walking and scenic tours: ask in person after the best view, not at the goodbye
- Museums and attractions: exit signage, and codes printed on tickets or receipts
- Adventure activities: send the link two to four hours later or the next morning, once people have dried off
- Food tours: at the final tasting stop
- Multi-day trips: on the last evening, not the final morning
The common thread is the peak, not the end. A group at a rooftop viewpoint is happy. The same group at the drop-off point is thinking about lunch.
3. Ask a specific question
“Please leave us a review” gets short reviews, or none. A question gets better ones. GetYourGuide suggests prompts like “What did you think of that rooftop view?” or “If you had to tell a friend about one moment from today, what would it be?” Fuller reviews with real detail persuade the next traveller far more than “Great tour!”
4. Use your Provider Rating to launch new activities
GetYourGuide calculates a Provider Rating from your active reviews across all your activities. If it’s 4.0 or higher, it shows on your new activities (on the card, the activity page and at checkout) until each one has three reviews of its own. Below 4.0, it isn’t shown at all.
In practice, this means review collection on today’s products is also launch support for tomorrow’s. We cover the detail in our GetYourGuide operator guide.
5. Ask your account manager about the Creator Review beta
In September 2026, Skift reported that GetYourGuide is testing a Creator Review programme for new and under-reviewed listings. Creators from a network of about 33,000 get one free booking and must post a review within 24 hours (at least 500 characters, with a photo), labelled “travel partner tested”. GetYourGuide says positive reviews aren’t guaranteed and it doesn’t edit them.
It’s a beta, and the published details are thin: there’s nothing yet on cost to operators or how to opt in. If you’re launching a new activity, ask your account manager whether you’re eligible. Don’t build a launch plan around it.
How to Get More Reviews on Viator
To get more reviews on Viator, tell guests in person that Viator’s review email is coming the next day, use the Request Reviews tool for guests who booked elsewhere, add the TripAdvisor review widget to your website, and keep Viator bookers on Viator’s own review route, because verified reviews count for more.
Viator works differently because of its link to TripAdvisor. According to Viator’s own ranking guidance, the number of reviews and the rating it uses are aggregated from traveller submissions on both Viator and TripAdvisor. That gives you more routes in, but they aren’t equal.
1. Prepare guests for Viator’s emails
Viator sends its first review request the day after the experience, with a text message. Your guide’s job is to make that email feel familiar rather than cold. Tell guests it’s coming, tell them it takes a few minutes, and tell them why it matters to a small operator.
Viator’s operator guidance makes the same point: a personal appeal before the email arrives works because face-to-face requests are hard to turn down. It also notes that recency matters to travellers as much as volume. It cites a PowerReviews survey in which 64% of consumers said they’d rather buy a product with fewer, recent reviews than one with more reviews from three or more months ago.
2. Use Request Reviews for guests who didn’t book on Viator
Your walk-up guests, direct bookers and phone bookers can’t review you on a Viator product page. They can review you on TripAdvisor, and that still counts towards your Viator rating.
Viator’s Request Reviews tool handles this. In the Management Center:
- Go to the Reviews tab and click Request reviews.
- Choose the product (recommended) or your TripAdvisor listing.
- Choose the email language and either the standard TripAdvisor template or your own.
- Enter the email addresses of guests you collected yourself, separated by commas.
- Agree to the terms and send.
Emails go out within 24 hours, with one reminder after seven days. These reviews are ungated, which means guests don’t need proof of purchase, but they do need to log in to or create a TripAdvisor account. A product-level review appears on your TripAdvisor product page and, per Viator, counts towards your rating on Viator.
(These steps are from Viator’s operator guidance; menu names in the Supplier Management Center change, so check the current layout.)
3. Add the TripAdvisor review widget to your own website
For direct bookers, the same Management Center has a Review Widgets section. Choose a specific product, pick a language and copy the code into your website, ideally your booking confirmation page. Like Request Reviews, it’s ungated and needs a TripAdvisor account.
4. Don’t send Viator bookers to TripAdvisor
The ungated routes are useful for guests Viator can’t reach. They’re a poor substitute for Viator’s own requests. Viator says verified-booker reviews are considered more trustworthy by travellers, and it recommends encouraging them if you want to be eligible for programmes such as Accelerate.
The Badge of Excellence also needs 15 or more reviews, alongside low cancellations and the other criteria in our Viator supplier guide. Viator’s early guidance puts the first threshold even lower: after five reviews, a product is likely to get more bookings.
So for a Viator booker, the ask is simple: “You’ll get an email from Viator tomorrow. If you enjoyed today, please fill it in.” Don’t hand them a TripAdvisor card.
Which Guest Goes Where
Most review advice ignores this, and it’s where good intentions get wasted. A guest can only review you where they’re eligible, and your guides rarely know how each guest booked.
| Tool | Use it for | Where the review lands |
|---|---|---|
| GetYourGuide QR code or link | GetYourGuide bookers | Your GetYourGuide activity page |
| Viator’s own review email | Viator bookers (tell them it’s coming) | Your Viator product page |
| Viator Request Reviews | Direct, phone and walk-up guests whose email you hold | Your TripAdvisor product page, counted in your Viator rating |
| TripAdvisor review widget | Direct bookers on your website | Your TripAdvisor product page or listing |
The simplest fix is to stop asking guides to sort guests at the exit. Give them one card with a GetYourGuide code on one side and a TripAdvisor or Google code on the other, and a single line: “If you booked on GetYourGuide, scan this side.”
I once watched a city-centre escape room put a smart QR sign by its exit and wait for the reviews to arrive. For six weeks, almost nothing changed. Groups walked straight past it, still arguing about the last puzzle. What moved the numbers was the game host standing beside the sign during the debrief, saying one sentence and pointing at it. The sign was the route. The person was the ask.
What Gets You Penalised
Both platforms are strict about review manipulation, and GetYourGuide has written its rules into the contract, alongside the other OTA contract terms worth reading before you sign. Its supplier terms (version 1 October 2026) define Review Manipulation as any conduct aimed at distorting the authenticity, volume or rating of reviews, and list what that includes:
- submitting or procuring reviews of your own services or anyone else’s
- making bookings to generate reviews or performance data, which rules out friends-and-family bookings to seed a new listing
- offering a customer any benefit for a review, or for changing or removing one
- selectively asking only happy guests to review (review gating)
- pressuring a customer about a review
- using AI to write content presented as genuine customer feedback
The terms also say you can’t contact customers privately about a review, and that all replies go through the Supplier Portal. Reviews are licensed exclusively to GetYourGuide, so you can’t copy them onto your own website without its approval. If GetYourGuide finds manipulation, it can remove reviews, correct your ratings, badges and rankings, withhold payouts on the bookings involved, and restrict or suspend your account.
Two practical points follow. First, keep any review message to a GetYourGuide guest to the review link. The terms limit what you can send their customers, and marketing material of any kind is banned, so no discount codes or links to your own website. Second, check your booking system’s post-visit emails. A “Loved it? Review us. Had a problem? Tell us privately” email is a gate, and it breaches both GetYourGuide’s and TripAdvisor’s rules.
On TripAdvisor (and so for your Viator rating), incentives of any kind are banned too: discounts, free drinks, prize draws or charity donations in a guest’s name. For the UK and US law on fake and incentivised reviews, see the incentives section of our OTA reviews guide. (This is a summary for operators, not legal advice.)
Track Your Review Rate, Not Your Review Count
A review count tells you how you’ve done. A review rate tells you how well you’re collecting, and it’s the only way to know whether your efforts to get more reviews on Viator and GetYourGuide are working. Arival’s operator guide to reviews (July 2026) gives the formula:
Review rate = reviews received in a period ÷ completed bookings in the same period × 100
Use the same window for both numbers, such as the last 90 days, and calculate it per product and per platform. Both GetYourGuide and Viator rank individual products, so a strong average across your business can hide one product that’s quietly going stale.
A simple example (hypothetical). A kayak tour in Kerry completes 400 GetYourGuide bookings over a summer quarter and collects 24 reviews: a 6% review rate. The operator moves the ask from the car park to the beach landing, two hours before the end, and adds QR cards. Over the next quarter, it completes another 400 bookings and collects 40 reviews: 10%. Same product and the same number of bookings, but two-thirds more reviews.
There’s no industry-wide benchmark for review rates, and Arival says as much. Set your own baseline, then a quarterly target. Viator’s former Experience Awards used “share of bookings with a review” as one of three ranking criteria, so it’s a number the platforms watch too.
Two habits keep the rate honest:
- Check the last review date on your three best sellers every month. If one has gone a few weeks without a review, find out why. Our guide to measuring OTA performance treats review recency as an early warning sign.
- Plan a review push at the start of each season. Seasonal operators lose recency over the winter. The first weeks of the season, when the team is fresh, are the time to rebuild it.
The biggest risk to your review rate isn’t the product. It’s the habit. A friend who runs boat trips on the west coast had one guide who asked every single group, at the same spot, in the same easy way. When that guide moved on mid-season, nobody noticed at first. Six weeks later the reviews had dropped by more than half, on the same boat, the same route and the same bookings. The fix was writing the ask into the guide briefing and checking the review rate every fortnight.
A Weekly Review Routine
Fifteen minutes a week keeps all of this running:
- Check your review rate per product and per platform for the last 30 and 90 days.
- Brief the team on the ask: when, the exact wording, and which card side to point to.
- Check QR stock: cards, tickets and signs actually in place.
- Reply to every new review within the platform’s window (GetYourGuide only allows replies to reviews from the last 30 days). Our review response templates cover the common complaints.
- Read GetYourGuide’s AI review summaries for recurring issues. Three reviews about the same confusing meeting point are a listing problem, which our listing optimisation guide helps you fix.
Reviews feed ranking directly on both platforms. GetYourGuide’s supplier terms list review ratings and the number of reviews among its main ranking parameters, and recent reviews count more. Our guide to how OTA ranking algorithms work explains why a listing with fewer, newer reviews can outrank one with hundreds of old ones.
Questions About Viator and GetYourGuide Reviews
How many reviews do you need on GetYourGuide?
By GetYourGuide’s own figures, three reviews can triple a new activity’s conversion rate, and the gain from each extra review shrinks after about 30. Recency still counts after that, so keep collecting.
How do I get more reviews on Viator from guests who didn’t book on Viator?
Use the Request Reviews tool in the Viator Management Center. Guests get a TripAdvisor review request, and their reviews count towards your Viator rating.
Can I ask friends to book my tour to get the first reviews?
No. GetYourGuide’s October 2026 supplier terms list “making Bookings for the purpose of generating reviews” as Review Manipulation, with penalties up to account restrictions.
Can I offer a discount or a free drink for a review?
No. GetYourGuide bans any benefit in exchange for a review, and TripAdvisor (whose reviews count towards your Viator rating) bans incentives whatever the rating. Thank reviewers in your public reply instead: GetYourGuide doesn’t allow private contact about a review.
Start With Your Three Best Sellers
You don’t need a new tool to get more reviews on Viator and GetYourGuide. You need an ask, a route and a number.
This week, pull 90 days of completed bookings and reviews for your three best-selling products, on each platform, and work out the review rate. Then make a GetYourGuide QR code for any activity that doesn’t have one, write the ask into your guide briefing, and check the rate again in a month. Whichever product moved least is where to look next.
