The following memo was sent to GetYourGuide employees on Jan. 30, 2026 by GetYourGuide CEO and co-founder, Johannes Reck.
Dear Team,
Last year, we set our sights on two ambitious financial targets: profitability and €1B+ [$1.2+B] in revenue. The FY2025 books have closed and the numbers are in. I’m incredibly proud to announce we achieved both of these targets, driven by €4B+ [$4.8+B] in Gross Merchandise Value from 33M+ experiences booked. This makes us the first experience platform to cross these thresholds.
To me, this moment is all about the power of conviction.
When we started, experiences were an afterthought in tourism. Investors thought our idea was crazy and raising capital was incredibly hard. The travel industry experts saw our category as too difficult. Online travel meant booking flights and accommodations—experiences were something you figured out when you got there.
We saw something different. We believed experiences represented the future, because they delivered a core human need: connection.
So, we bet everything on GetYourGuide. We put grad school and our first jobs on pause, worked out of a tiny university room that also hosted our servers, took customer service calls on our personal phones, and designed (and re-designed) our platform. Our early and only customers were friends and family.
We persevered because we knew that with the right infrastructure, experiences would become central to the way people plan trips.
And that’s what we’ve achieved. Today, the whole way people travel revolves around our category.
Our work – your work – has paid off. Our strategy team just wrapped research that shows:
- The global experiences market is now worth ~€420B+
- Our category’s growth will accelerate from 6% (2015-2025) to 9% (2025-2030)
- Travelers now take 7-8 trips and spend ~€1.5K per household on experiences every year
Our conviction has put GetYourGuide in the best possible position, and it’s our conviction that will keep us there.
There have been countless tempting sidequests on our journey. But since day one, we've never deviated from our mission to unlock the world's most unforgettable travel experiences. Because we started in Europe, we had to focus on solving the complexity of this continent's many corridors early on. In return, we gained a unique grasp of the global power of our business model.
That focus has given us compounding advantages. Each experience expands our global inventory. With each booking we win, we improve the experience for all our customers. And each improvement wins more bookings. This self-reinforcing loop demonstrates the true scale of our supply and demand and is the key to our competitive edge.
That’s how we've curated the best of everything on GetYourGuide. Our 50,000 supply partners offer 200,000+ unforgettable experiences in 18,000 destinations. We've made huge strides to elevate the range and quality of our offering. No matter where travelers are headed, they can use our platform to find a complete selection of experiences worth traveling for.
Our quality bar is the foundation of our most valuable compounding advantage: loyalty. In 2025, repeat bookings drove the majority of our GMV.
But here’s what really counts: we're in a position of strength. We can profitably fund our own growth. We have the freedom to build for the long term, under no pressure except our conviction to deliver on our mission – connecting travelers with unforgettable experiences.
That mission matters now more than ever. At a time when most of our lives are spent online, GetYourGuide connects people with what's real: the world's great cultures and places, their fellow explorers, and their own sense of wonder.
That's a purpose worth pursuing, and that's precisely our plan. 🚀
Let's make it count,
Johannes
