08/01/2026
**WHEN YOU BOOK A LOCAL TOUR, WHO SHOULD CONTROL YOUR EXPERIENCE—THE LOCAL OPERATOR OR A GLOBAL CORPORATION?**
My XO Adventures is terminating its relationship with Viator after reviewing its latest Supplier Agreement.
Our minimum commission to Viator is already **23% of every booking**. Yet under the new agreement, Viator seeks even more control while placing more financial, operational, and legal risk on the local company actually providing the tour.
We provide the guides, vehicles, insurance, permits, fuel, equipment, local knowledge, safety procedures, professional photography, and personal customer care. Viator provides the marketplace, and takes nearly one-quarter of the booking before we begin delivering the experience.
That commission has consequences. It puts pressure on tour prices, reduces the money available for local wages and reinvestment, and makes it harder for independent operators to compete.
But the commission is only part of the problem.
**The new agreement says Viator or its channel partners may determine the actual retail price of our tours.** They may alter prices through promotions and other commercial arrangements even though we are the business responsible for delivering everything the customer purchased.
**Viator may also reward operators who offer higher commissions with better visibility and search placement.** Travelers may believe they are seeing the best local experience when they may actually be seeing the business willing to surrender the largest share of its revenue.
**The agreement interferes with direct customer service.**
My XO Adventures responds to guests in minutes and often seconds. We do that by speaking directly with people—not by forcing every important conversation through a corporate-controlled portal.
Private tours require real communication. We discuss pickup locations, weather, accessibility, mobility, wildlife, safety, personal interests, children, medical concerns, timing, photography, and changing conditions. A guest waiting at a hotel or dealing with an urgent issue should be able to speak directly with the company responsible for their experience.
Viator’s agreement generally requires operator communication to occur through its interface unless Viator agrees otherwise. That does not improve our customer service. It inserts a global intermediary between a guest and the local people trying to help them.
**Viator also claims broad authority over refunds and payments.**
It may communicate directly with guests, compensate them at its discretion, withhold our payment, recover money already paid, and charge additional fees. The agreement places responsibility for chargebacks, payment reversals, and payment-provider refunds on the supplier “regardless of the reason.”
In other words, Viator can influence the decision while the small business carries the financial loss.
**Technology errors are also pushed onto the operator.**
If incorrect prices or availability are transmitted through a booking-system integration, the agreement treats that information as though the supplier provided it. Viator may rely on older synchronized data, disable manual price editing, and hold the local operator responsible for mistakes involving systems the operator does not fully control.
**Then there is the use of our work, our data, and potentially our guests’ images.**
The agreement gives Viator a perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, worldwide license to supplier photographs, videos, descriptions, itineraries, and other material. It permits Viator to create derivative works and use supplier content to train and improve its algorithms, machine-learning models, and artificial-intelligence systems.
Local businesses spend years developing their tours, photography, destination knowledge, itineraries, and reputations. Paying a minimum commission of 23% should not also require surrendering permanent rights that may help a global corporation build its technology or promote an entire marketplace of competing products.
The agreement also allows Viator to retain data after the relationship ends, imposes broad incident-reporting duties, gives Viator sole discretion over insurance sufficiency, and allows it to revise the agreement with only 15 days’ notice. Remaining silent is treated as acceptance.
Viator can limit its own financial liability while requiring the small operator to accept broad liability for tours, taxes, guest claims, content, data, advertising, integrations, and other risks.
This is **anti-small-business in effect**, regardless of how it is marketed.
Viator is not an independent local travel company. It is owned by publicly traded Tripadvisor, Inc. The broader Tripadvisor corporate family includes Tripadvisor, Viator, Bókun, and Cruise Critic. TheFork also remains part of the group while a proposed sale to American Express is pending.
This is not about refusing accountability. My XO Adventures believes in safety, fair refunds, fast communication, accurate listings, proper insurance, and exceptional guest service.
It is about a fair question:
**How can a platform take at least 23% of a booking, control pricing and communication, retain broad rights to business and guest-related content, make refund decisions, influence visibility, and then shift so much of the remaining risk back to the small local operator?**
Travelers have more power than they may realize.
When possible:
• Book directly with locally owned tour companies.
• Ask how much of your payment stays in the destination.
• Compare the direct price with the marketplace price.
• Let the actual operator control your guest experience.
• Support the guides, drivers, photographers, and small businesses doing the work.
**Book direct. Keep tourism local. Let local experts take care of their guests.**
—Daniel Milks
Owner, My XO Adventures
