Expedia Group has officially set its sights on one of the most strategic and fast-growing parts of travel: activities and experiences. The company announced that it has agreed to acquire Tiqets, the Amsterdam-based platform best known for booking tickets to iconic museums, attractions, and cultural experiences around the world. Expedia Tiqets acquisition

If the deal closes as planned in the first quarter of 2026, it will mark one of the most significant moves Expedia has made in years to round out its “full trip” vision. Flights, hotels, cars, insurance, and now deeply integrated experiences. For travelers, this means fewer fragmented bookings. For partners, it signals bigger distribution and new monetization opportunities.

Why experiences are the real battleground in travel right now

Experiences are no longer an add-on. They are one of the fastest-growing and highest-margin segments in travel. According to McKinsey and Skift Research, travelers are spending a growing share of their budget on what they do at a destination, not just where they stay. Younger travelers in particular are prioritizing museums, events, tours, and local culture over traditional sightseeing.

This is exactly where Tiqets built its reputation. Since launching in 2014, the platform has focused on curated, skip-the-line access to museums and attractions, with strong mobile-first UX and last-minute availability. It operates in more than 60 countries, over 1,000 cities, and supports 17 languages.

For Expedia Group, acquiring Tiqets is less about adding inventory and more about strengthening its control over the entire travel journey.

What Tiqets brings to Expedia’s ecosystem

Tiqets is not just another experiences marketplace. Its core strength lies in curation, relationships with cultural institutions, and seamless mobile ticketing. Unlike open marketplaces flooded with generic tours, Tiqets has historically focused on museums, exhibitions, landmarks, and iconic attractions.

This fits neatly into Expedia Group’s broader strategy of modular travel powered by APIs. As Alfonso Paredes, President of B2B at Expedia Group, put it, the Tiqets integration is a key step toward building the most comprehensive global travel solution across activities, air, car, and insurance.

For Expedia’s B2B partners, this matters. Hotels, airlines, OTAs, travel agencies, and even fintech or super-apps using Expedia APIs can now potentially bundle high-quality experiences directly into their own platforms.

What changes for travelers and partners

From a traveler perspective, the biggest shift will likely be timing and personalization. Experiences are often booked last, sometimes even once a traveler has arrived. By embedding Tiqets inventory deeper into Expedia’s ecosystem, activities can be surfaced earlier in the journey and matched more intelligently to traveler intent.

For partners, the implications are broader.

Key partner impacts to watch

• Better conversion by bundling experiences with flights and hotels
• Access to Tiqets’ curated inventory via Expedia’s B2B APIs
• More data-driven personalization across the trip lifecycle
• Increased visibility for museums and attractions outside traditional OTAs

This move also strengthens Expedia Group Advertising, allowing brands and destinations to promote experiences alongside core travel products, backed by richer first-party data.

How this compares to Booking, Airbnb, and GetYourGuide

Expedia’s move puts it squarely back into the experiences arms race. Booking Holdings has been steadily expanding Booking.com Experiences and owns a stake in GetYourGuide. Airbnb pivoted heavily into experiences before pulling back and refocusing on core stays, though it still experiments in this space. Trip.com has built a strong attractions distribution in Asia.

What makes this deal different is Tiqets’ positioning. While GetYourGuide leans heavily into tours and activities and Viator focuses on scale and breadth, Tiqets owns a premium niche around cultural institutions and museums. This gives Expedia a differentiated angle rather than a direct clone of competitors.

Industry analysts at Phocuswright and Skift have consistently pointed out that fragmentation remains the biggest challenge in experiences. This acquisition is clearly an attempt to reduce that fragmentation by bringing experiences closer to the point of travel planning, not after.

Regulatory timing and what happens next

The transaction is still subject to Works Council advice and customary closing conditions, which is standard for a deal involving a European company. Assuming no delays, closing is expected in Q1 2026.

Between now and then, the real work will happen quietly. API alignment, inventory mapping, UX decisions, and partner onboarding will determine whether this becomes a seamless integration or just another brand sitting under a large corporate umbrella.

Laurens Leurink, CEO of Tiqets, framed the deal as a way to combine Expedia’s global reach with the platform Tiqets has built over the past decade. That balance between scale and curation will be the key tension to manage.

Conclusion: a smart move, but execution will decide everything

This acquisition makes strategic sense. Experiences are where growth, margins, and differentiation increasingly live. Expedia buying Tiqets is not about catching up, it is about choosing a focused lane within a crowded market.

If executed well, this could give Expedia Group a stronger, more premium experience offering than some of its rivals, especially in culture-driven destinations. If executed poorly, it risks diluting what made Tiqets trusted in the first place.

The broader trend is clear. Travel platforms are racing to own more of the journey, not just transactions but moments. As Skift, Phocuswright, and McKinsey have all highlighted, the future of travel belongs to companies that can connect inspiration, booking, and experience in one coherent flow.

Expedia just placed a serious bet that museums, attractions, and culture are not side content, but core infrastructure. The next year will show whether that bet pays off.