Google Things to Do: The Free Distribution Channel Most Operators Still Ignore
A customer searches "boat tour Bar Harbor" on Google. The top of the results page is paid ads, mostly from OTAs. The next chunk is a map with local listings. And then, increasingly, there's a horizontal carousel of tour options with prices, photos, dates, and a booking button, sitting right in the Google results.
That carousel is Google Things to Do. It's free distribution sitting in arguably the most valuable piece of real estate on the internet for tour operators. And most of us either don't know we're in it, don't know we should be in it, or have a half-claimed listing that's losing bookings we don't even realise we could be capturing.
It's worth understanding what this thing actually is and how it works, because the operators who treat it seriously have, in some cases, materially shifted their direct booking volume without spending a cent on it.
What Google Things to Do Actually Is
Google Things to Do is a product that lets Google display tour and activity inventory directly in search results, with real-time availability and pricing, linked to either an OTA, a direct booking source, or both.
For a customer searching for tours in a destination, the result is that they see your tour as a card with a photo, a star rating, a price, and a "book" button, without having to click through to a website at all. They can compare options visually, filter by date, and book through whichever channel Google has surfaced.
For operators, this matters because two things are happening simultaneously.
First, organic search traffic for tour queries is increasingly being captured inside Google itself, before it ever reaches our websites or the OTA platforms. The traditional SEO model (rank for a keyword, get traffic to your site, convert there) is being partially replaced by an embedded-booking model (appear in the Google carousel, get booked from inside Google's results).
Second, the OTAs were earlier to this than most operators. Viator, GetYourGuide, and others have systematically pushed their inventory into Google Things to Do. If your tours appear in the carousel only via the OTAs, every booking captured through it pays OTA commission, even though the customer never explicitly visited the OTA's site.
The Direct vs OTA Display Question
This is the bit that matters most strategically.
When a customer sees the Google Things to Do carousel, the booking buttons can route to multiple destinations. They can route to the OTA that listed the inventory (Viator, GetYourGuide, etc.), or they can route directly to the operator's own booking system if the operator is connected as a direct supplier.
If both options are present, Google generally shows them both, sometimes with a "compare prices" view. The customer chooses where to book.
For operators not connected directly, all the bookings flow through the OTAs. The operator pays full commission on volume that was technically organic Google search traffic.
For operators who are connected directly, the customer has a choice, and a meaningful share of them choose to book direct, especially when the direct option is clearly displayed and the price is at parity.
The direct connection isn't free; it requires either a booking system that supports the Google Things to Do feed or a third-party integration that pushes your availability into Google's system. But once the connection is live, the bookings that arrive through it carry no platform commission, only standard payment processing.
How to Get In
There are essentially three paths.
Through your booking system, if it supports the integration. Several modern booking platforms now offer Google Things to Do as a connected channel. If yours does, the setup is usually a configuration switch and a verification step. Worth checking even if you don't think yours does, because more systems have added it in the last eighteen months.
Through a third-party connectivity provider. A handful of channel managers and connectivity tools push operator availability into Google Things to Do on the operator's behalf. These typically charge a small monthly fee or a percentage of bookings, but materially lower than OTA commission.
Through your existing OTA presence. This is the default path most operators are on. Your inventory appears in Google Things to Do via the OTA, you pay full OTA commission on bookings. The "do nothing" option.
The cost-benefit of moving from the third path to one of the first two depends on your booking volume from the channel and your direct booking economics. For operators with meaningful Google search traffic in their destination, the math usually favours connecting directly.
What You Can Control (And What You Can't)
A common misconception is that Google Things to Do is "an OTA" or "a marketing channel" that you can manage like one. It isn't. Google is acting as an aggregator, displaying inventory from multiple sources. You can influence what shows up, but you can't fully control it.
You can control your own listing content if you're connected directly. Photos, descriptions, pricing, availability. The information Google displays for your tour, when sourced from your own feed, can be managed by you.
You can't fully control how Google ranks options. The order in which tours appear in the carousel is determined by Google's algorithm, which factors in things like price competitiveness, review scores, booking-flow quality, and a number of signals that aren't publicly documented. Operators with strong reviews and clean booking flows tend to rank better.
You can't directly buy your way to the top. Google Things to Do isn't a paid ads system in the traditional sense. It's an organic display, and the ranking is mostly determined by your underlying quality signals.
You can influence visibility through your Google Business Profile. A well-optimised Business Profile, with accurate hours, location, reviews, and tour-relevant attributes, tends to improve how Google ranks the operator's tours in the Things to Do carousel.
The Underrated Tactical Win
A specific tactical observation that doesn't get talked about enough: review velocity matters disproportionately for Google Things to Do ranking.
Operators with consistent recent reviews (say, the last ninety days) tend to outperform operators with the same overall star rating but older reviews. This makes sense from Google's perspective; recent reviews are stronger signals of current operating quality.
The practical implication: a deliberate review request flow that keeps fresh reviews flowing onto your Google Business Profile and Tripadvisor every week tends to lift your Things to Do visibility over time. We've covered this elsewhere; it's the same review program that helps with general local SEO, just with a Things to Do payoff layered on top.
The Direct-Connection Risk
A note on what to watch for if you do connect directly.
When customers can book directly from inside Google search results, your booking flow needs to handle traffic that has never visited your website. They've never seen your branding, your photos, your safety information, or your cancellation policy. They've seen one card in a Google carousel and clicked "book".
This puts more weight on your booking confirmation email and your pre-arrival communication than most operators are used to. The customer journey now starts at booking confirmation, not at the homepage. Operators who haven't designed for this can deliver a worse experience to Things to Do bookings than to website bookings.
The fix is straightforward: a stronger booking confirmation that includes the orientation, expectations, and trust signals a first-time site visitor would have received. Treat the confirmation email as the first chapter of the customer experience, not as a receipt.
Why This Is Worth Acting On Now
Two things are happening that make this more time-sensitive than it would otherwise be.
First, Google has been steadily increasing the prominence of Things to Do in search results. The carousel is being displayed for more queries, with more options, and the click-through patterns are shifting from traditional organic results toward in-results booking. The window in which traditional SEO alone was sufficient is narrowing.
Second, the operators who get in early build review history and ranking position that's hard for later entrants to displace. Like every Google product, early signals matter, and the carousel results we'll be looking at in three years will be shaped meaningfully by what gets indexed and reviewed now.
A Note on Realism
Google Things to Do isn't a silver bullet. It won't replace your other distribution channels. It probably won't change your overall booking volume in the first three months you're connected. For some product categories (high-end private experiences, niche specialty tours), the volume from this channel will be modest.
But for the operators it suits (mid-priced shared tours, broad-appeal experiences, products in destinations with strong search volume), this is meaningful free distribution that most peers haven't yet figured out. Acting on it now, while it's still under-leveraged, is one of the few obvious wins available in our industry.
Dazhboards integrates with Google Things to Do as a connected channel, so direct bookings flow through without OTA commission. The setup is a one-time configuration, and the bookings that result are pure direct. If you're already operating in this space without a direct connection, you're handing margin to the OTAs on traffic Google was trying to send you directly.