How GetYourGuide boosted global sales by 14% with Soldo’s spend management platform

Introduction

GetYourGuide knows what makes a trip unforgettable. The online travel agent offers customers 200,000 experiences in more than 12,000 cities across the globe.

By building strong partnerships with museums, tour operators, adventure parks, and more, GetYourGuide ensures quality access to top attractions for its customers. Buying in bulk and from multiple carefully selected vendors secures better pricing and gives customers special access to in-demand activities.

Knowing that a lengthy procurement process would be too slow for the fast-moving tourism industry, GetYourGuide equipped its sales team with credit cards. But it soon found that control and visibility were lacking.

We spoke to Gianmichele Zappia, Head of Risk and Fraud, about how GetYourGuide became more efficient, reduced fraud risk, and dedicated more of its time on creating memorable travel experiences for customers.

The challenge

GetYourGuide is rapidly expanding its global operations and as the demand for travel activities surged, managing finances efficiently became increasingly complex.

The company faced operational obstacles that hindered growth and strained resources, prompting the need for a more streamlined solution.

Challenge 1: Restricted spending

GetYourGuide knew that the traditional procurement process would be too lengthy for every purchase, so they chose to equip employees with credit cards. But with the restrictive limits of credit cards, there was always a limit on how much money could be spent in any given period.

For a company like GetYourGuide that pre-purchases tickets in bulk and for many activities, spending limits can be – and were – reached quickly. It meant their sales teams had to put off critical, timely purchases until their card’s limits reset or were temporarily increased – an issue that hurt productivity and stoked frustration.

Challenge 2: Uncontrolled spending

Overspending was a major concern for GetYourGuide. The company’s spending is, by nature, “decentralised,” meaning its many employees are responsible for making purchases from various providers worldwide.

But without a unified system to track these transactions in real-time, the finance team couldn’t see spending patterns until after purchases had already been made, often days or weeks later when bank statements came in. By the time they reconciled expenses, the company may have already overspent for that period, creating inefficiencies and budget overruns.

Challenge 3: Inaccurate, time-consuming reporting

As a global company, GetYourGuide had different reconciliation protocols for different vendors and regions, making the procurement process inconsistent and time-consuming. Employees had to navigate various local requirements, often manually handling invoices, receipts, and approvals.

This lack of standardisation across vendors and regions not only delayed purchases but also increased the risk of errors during reconciliation. Tracking and matching payments to specific purchases became time-consuming, slowing down operations and detracting from the team’s ability to focus on their most valuable task: increasing sales.

The need

GetYourGuide needed a spend management platform that could enable:

• Spending freedom
• Real-time visibility
• Streamlined reporting

The solution

Since 2017, Soldo’s Product Team has worked with GetYourGuide to achieve scalability, security, and efficiency. Soldo gave GetYourGuide:

Ability to handle limits: Soldo developed a feature that automatically tops up accounts within a set amount, so the team can keep purchasing without hitting limits or bringing productivity to a halt.

Single-use virtual cards: Soldo introduced a custom solution where a virtual card is created for a specific purchase and is deactivated immediately after the transaction is completed, improving security and preventing overspending.

Intercode accounting processes: Soldo supported global offices by providing separate cards for each location and ensuring employees could make purchases without dealing with reimbursement processes.

This comprehensive approach empowered GetYourGuide’s teams to focus on delivering exceptional travel experiences without financial roadblocks – allowing the company to scale faster than ever.

The impact

GetYourGuide now spends more time creating unforgettable travel experiences and less time manually managing their spend.

With Soldo’s automatic account top-up feature, they now pre-buy tickets as soon as they need it without interrupting sales. No longer constantly facing the credit card limits has already resulted in a measurable win: a 14% increase in sales.

GetYourGuide also now has more control over spending.

“It’s so easy to manage company spending, and see everything in real-time,” Gianmichele explains. “I can set rules that control who’s allowed to do what, set up automatic instant funding to maintain budgeting, and disable particular expense categories or geographical locations.”

Finally, at the post-payment stage, Soldo streamlined the reconciliation process across different vendors and regions, reducing errors and delays in reporting, and saving the team valuable time.

All in all, an increase in sales and more control has made growth easier, ultimately supporting GetYourGuide’s global expansion ambitions.

“Working with Soldo has been great. We could not have kept things running so successfully over in Asia without Soldo,” says Gianmichele referencing one of the company’s key markets.