ToursByLocals, which helps tourists search for and book local guides, raises $33M from Tritium Partners, says it has ~4K guides and 30K tours in 162 countries
The tours and experiences market is projected to be worth $183 billion this year, and today a startup that has made inroads …
Context & Ripple Effects
The tours-and-experiences category has been defined by GetYourGuide's fundraising arc: a $484M SoftBank-led Series E at a $1B+ valuation in 2019, then a $133M convertible note that lifted total funding to $780M during the pandemic, and eventually a $194M raise at a $2B valuation in 2023. Against that backdrop, ToursByLocals' $33M from Tritium Partners is a deliberately smaller bet on a different structure — a direct guide network of ~4K guides and 30K tours spread across 162 countries rather than a ticket-volume marketplace.
The raise lands in a market the article pegs at $183 billion for the year, where Airbnb had already signaled demand for local content with its user-generated guidebooks and neighborhood matching, and Headout was scaling last-minute activity bookings city by city. Capital is choosing between platform models, and ToursByLocals is positioning as the asset-light alternative.
First-order effects
- ToursByLocals gets growth capital to deepen its 162-country guide roster without the burn profile of GetYourGuide's ticket-marketplace model, while Tritium Partners buys into the $183B experiences category through a lower-cost supply structure.
Second-order effects
- GetYourGuide and Headout face competitive pressure on supply breadth rather than just demand aggregation — Headout's expansion from 21 toward 100 cities shows the same land-grab logic — pushing platforms to sign exclusive guide relationships and bundle inventory.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, experiences booking consolidates around platforms that control supplier relationships, forcing independent guides and small tour operators to choose between aggregator distribution and direct channels — with Tourlane's multi-day supplier-coordination model pointing to how intermediation extends beyond single-day tours.
The trend: Travel experiences booking is consolidating around well-capitalized platforms, with mid-sized players like ToursByLocals raising targeted rounds to defend a guide-direct niche against marketplace giants.