What Our Tour Shortlist Actually Shows
An audit of every tour we currently recommend — partners, free cancellation, skip-the-line, and how often we tell you to skip. Numbers update when the shortlist does.
GetYourGuide and Viator will always outspend us. They will not publish a shortlist that says skip this. The only original thing we can own is the dataset we already collect: partner, price, free cancellation, and a verdict.
This is that dataset, counted. Not a survey of every product in Europe. An audit of every listing we are willing to put a booking button on.
The tables below are generated from the destination files. If we add Osaka baseball or drop a padded cruise, the numbers move. That is the method.
What to cite
Use the quote box under the tables. If you write about cancellation, start with what free cancellation actually covers. If you write about queues, skip-the-line tickets. If you write about bad itineraries, tourist-trap patterns.
Cities this quarter’s shortlist leans on: Porto, Seville, Krakow, Osaka, Cusco, Queenstown, Valencia.
What we will not claim
We have not mystery-shopped forty Colosseum tickets. We have not called every partner’s refund desk. Those are next-quarter projects if we do them — same page, new date, new method paragraph. Until then, we only count what is on this site.
- Destinations
- 30
- Listings audited
- 210
- Free cancellation
- 98%
- Platforms compared
- 4
Figures refresh whenever we update a destination file. Last hub check Wed Aug 12 2026 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time).
Free cancellation, by partner
Share of our current shortlist marked free cancellation on that platform. This is not “which company refunds more often in the wild” — it is which partners we can honestly prefer when two tours are otherwise equal. See what free cancellation actually covers.
| Partner | Listings | Share of catalogue | Free cancellation | Skip-the-line |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GetYourGuide | 98 | 47% | 98% | 14 |
| Viator | 82 | 39% | 100% | 3 |
| Klook | 17 | 8% | 88% | 4 |
| Tiqets | 13 | 6% | 92% | 8 |
Skip-the-line tickets we actually list
29 timed-entry or queue products on the site right now, split across 4 platforms. We do not claim to have priced every Colosseum reseller in Rome. We claim this: when we shortlist skip-the-line, we record who sells it. Method for travellers: are skip-the-line tickets worth it.
What we tell people to skip
71 of 210 verdicts (34%) use skip language — “skip”, “do not”, “not for”, “combo”, “tourist trap”. That is the point of the shortlist. Patterns: how to spot a tourist-trap tour.
Median price by type
Converted to US dollars with a fixed display rate so a yen ticket and a euro ticket can sit on one table. Not live FX.
| Type | Listings | Median (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| Day trips | 46 | $81 |
| Culture & history | 39 | $42 |
| Food & drink | 36 | $92 |
| Skip-the-line tickets | 29 | $40 |
| Walking tours | 21 | $38 |
| Water & boats | 16 | $79 |
| Outdoors & hiking | 14 | $65 |
| Adventure & adrenaline | 9 | $119 |
Highest-ticket listings on the shortlist
- Hanoi — Ha Long Bay overnight on a mid-range boat₫3,200,000 · Klook
- Hanoi — Ninh Binh (Tam Coc / Trang An) day trip₫1,400,000 · Klook
- Hanoi — Old Quarter street-food walk₫650,000 · GetYourGuide
- Hanoi — Egg coffee tasting — do not overfit₫250,000 · GetYourGuide
- Hanoi — Train Street — look, do not dine on the tracks₫200,000 · Viator
Destinations in this guide
Common questions
Did you price every tour in Rome across four websites?
No. That would be a different study. This page audits the shortlist we actually publish — every paid activity on Explore Activities — and splits it by partner, cancellation, and category. Inventing a 40-ticket Rome sample would be a press release, not data.
Can journalists use these figures?
Yes, with a link to this page and the date on the tables. Email hello@exploreactivities.com if you want a city cut or a chart. We do not sell sponsored listings.
How often will you repeat this?
Once a quarter, same method, as the catalogue grows. The tables on this page already recompute from the live markdown. The write-up gets a new date when we change the method.
Read next
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When to Book Tours in Advance (and When Booking Early Costs You Money)
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