GetYourGuide, one of the world's largest online tours and activities booking platforms, has announced it will pass the cost of digital services taxes directly to the tour operators and experience providers listed on its marketplace. The move highlights a growing and unintended consequence of digital services taxes introduced by various governments: rather than squeezing the profits of large technology companies, the financial burden is trickling down to the small and medium-sized businesses that depend on those platforms to reach customers. For independent tour operators already navigating thin margins and post-pandemic recovery, the added cost could represent a meaningful financial strain.
- 1GetYourGuide will transfer its digital services tax liability onto the tour operators and activity providers who list on its platform.
- 2Digital services taxes were originally conceived to ensure large technology and internet companies pay a fairer share of tax in the countries where they generate revenue.
- 3Small and independent tour operators — many of whom rely heavily on platforms like GetYourGuide for bookings — are set to absorb these new costs with little negotiating power.
- 4The situation reflects a broader pattern across the platform economy, where regulatory costs designed for Big Tech are redirected toward the smaller vendors those platforms serve.
What Digital Services Taxes Were Designed to Do
Digital services taxes emerged over the past decade as governments grew frustrated with the ability of large multinational technology companies to generate significant revenues within their borders while paying relatively little corporate tax locally. Countries including France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain introduced their own versions of these levies, typically calculated as a percentage of revenues earned from digital advertising, online marketplaces, or data services. The intent was straightforward: make platforms like Google, Amazon, and Meta contribute more meaningfully to the public finances of the nations where their users and customers are based.
In practice, however, the mechanics of these taxes have created complications that policymakers may not have fully anticipated. Because digital services taxes are assessed on gross revenues rather than profits, platforms face a predictable incentive to treat them as an operational cost to be passed along the supply chain. This is not unique to the travel sector — similar dynamics have played out in e-commerce and digital advertising — but the travel industry's reliance on small, often family-run operators makes the downstream impact particularly visible and acute.
How GetYourGuide's Decision Affects Tour Operators
For the tour guides, activity providers, and small experience businesses that list their offerings on GetYourGuide, the platform represents a critical source of demand. Many operators, especially those without the resources to run sophisticated direct-booking websites or marketing campaigns, depend on marketplace platforms to fill their schedules and generate consistent revenue. The relationship, while commercially valuable, also creates a power imbalance: operators need the platform more than the platform needs any single operator, which limits their ability to push back on new fee structures or cost transfers.
When a platform of GetYourGuide's scale decides to pass through a tax cost, the cumulative effect across thousands of operators in multiple countries can be significant. Even a modest percentage-point increase in effective commission or fees can erode margins for businesses where profit is already tightly managed. Tour operators in destinations heavily visited by international travelers — where digital services taxes are more likely to apply — may feel the pinch most acutely, particularly those in European markets where several national digital levies are already in force.
A Warning Sign for the Broader Platform Economy
GetYourGuide's decision is unlikely to be an isolated case. Across the platform economy, from ride-hailing to food delivery to freelance marketplaces, there is a recurring pattern in which regulatory or compliance costs introduced at the platform level are ultimately borne by the independent contractors and small businesses that make up the supply side of these marketplaces. As digital services taxes become more widespread — and as international negotiations over a global minimum tax framework continue to evolve — the question of who ultimately pays becomes increasingly important for policymakers to address.
The travel industry in particular has been vocal about the need for tax and regulatory frameworks that account for the sector's unique structure, which depends on a vast ecosystem of micro-businesses and sole traders. Industry associations have long argued that blunt instruments applied at the platform level can have disproportionate effects on the smallest players. The GetYourGuide situation may serve as a concrete example that prompts regulators to revisit how digital levies are structured and whether safeguards are needed to prevent the intended targets of these taxes from simply passing costs downstream.
Why it matters
This story matters because it reveals a significant gap between the policy intent of digital services taxes and their real-world economic impact. Laws designed to make wealthy technology companies pay more are instead creating new financial pressures for small tour operators, many of whom are still recovering from the severe disruptions of the pandemic era. As governments worldwide continue to develop digital tax frameworks, the GetYourGuide case offers a cautionary example of how platform-economy dynamics can redirect tax burdens away from their intended targets.
Common questions
Can tour operators refuse to absorb the digital services tax cost passed on by GetYourGuide?
In theory, operators could choose to delist from the platform, but in practice many rely too heavily on GetYourGuide's customer reach to walk away. The power imbalance inherent in large marketplace platforms makes meaningful negotiation difficult for individual small operators, leaving most with little choice but to accept the new cost structure or find ways to offset it elsewhere in their pricing.
Are other travel booking platforms likely to follow GetYourGuide's approach?
It is plausible that other online travel marketplaces operating in markets with digital services taxes will adopt similar cost-transfer approaches, as the underlying commercial incentive is the same across the industry. Platforms are motivated to protect their own margins, and passing regulatory costs to suppliers is a well-established pattern in the broader platform economy. Operators and industry groups will likely be watching closely to see how competitors respond.
