10–11. Failures and exits, and the aggregator layer

10. Failures and exits — the survival pattern

The casualties are overwhelmingly single-region, single-founder, generic-domain
operators. Dead or dormant domains verified by fetch across the scan:
tuscanyridebike.com, proseccobike.it, barolobike.it, bikelanghe.com,
bluecoastbikes.com (HTTP 410 Gone — deliberately retired), rideportugal.com
(sold to a web agency), cyclingportugal.com (listed for sale), biketuscany.com
(parked), bikesandwines.com (Mendoza, both TLDs dead), mrhugobikes.com (lost to a
squatter), fishbike.nz, blueskybicycletours.com, bikenewberg.org,
avantiplus.co.nz, cycleokanagan, okanaganbiketours.com (404),
francebiketrips.com, bikeburgundy.com, detoursinfrance.com, bellefrance.co.uk
(connection refused; last Wayback snapshot 1 March 2023), radissimo.at.

On the UK statutory register, of the first 20 companies matching "cycle tours",
10 are dissolved; "cycling holidays" and "bike tours" show the same churn
(the Failures, Seasonality And Regulation chapter).

Three closures with instructive causes:

1. CTC Cycling Holidays & Tours (Cycling UK's own subsidiary) ceased trading
   October 2021 after 20 years. Among the stated reasons: market research showed
   customers wanted "a wider range and more supported cycling holiday
   experience" than its volunteer-led model delivered. The stated failure mode
   was not enough support, not too much — direct evidence for the thesis.
2. Contours Cycling Holidays — a successful UK self-guided walking operator
   spun up a cycling arm in April 2016, traded it about three years, went dormant
   by 2019/20 and struck it off in January 2026. The parent still sells walking and
   trail running only. Self-guided walking logistics do not automatically carry over
   to self-guided cycling.
3. Bloomfield Bicycle Company, Prince Edward County — offered county-wide
   delivery plus on-call roadside rescue in a prime wine region and suspended the
   rental business anyway. The 48-hour notice and 9am/6pm-only windows show why: the
   van economics only work on rigid batching.

And the consolidation pattern at the top:

• Cycling for Softies — founded Manchester 1982 by Susi Madron, the brand that
  invented this category. Founder company dissolved 2016; the brand entity is now
  filed as dormant; the business sits inside the Wilderness Group (six brands).
  (the Failures, Seasonality And Regulation chapter)

  ⚠️ A named private-equity ownership chain previously appeared here and has been
  DELETED, not struck through. It named a specific investment firm, a holding
  structure and a dated statutory filing event. No file in this corpus supports
  any of it, and the Failures, Seasonality And Regulation chapter — the source
  it cited — records Wilderness Group's ownership as [NOT FOUND] behind an
  HTTP 403. It was removed outright rather than struck through because an unsourced
  named allegation about a real firm should not remain legible on the page. Recorded
  as S-2 in the 7. Cross-file consistency audit chapter.
  Wilderness Group's ownership and backing remain [NOT FOUND].

• Headwater IS Exodus — the same legal entity (Exodus Travels Ltd, no. 1150160),
  inside Travelopia, owned by KKR since 2017.
• Inntravel and Explore Worldwide → Hotelplan UK → DERTOUR Group → REWE Group
  (sold by Migros, early 2025).
• VBT and Country Walkers → Xanterra Travel Collection.
• Austria Radreisen + Rotalis + Velotours → one group, one shared tour database.
• Girolibero + Zeppelin → one site, one entity.
• Wine Country Bikes + Getaway Adventures → shared phone, email and staff.

The survival pattern is consistent across every market: the long survivors either
own the rolling stock and a route library in one region, or they are absorbed into
a multi-brand group that spreads marketing, bonding and back-office — and often
hedges the season. Thin, asset-light, English-language intermediary brands are the
ones that dissolve. Cellar Door Cycling starts asset-light by design, which is
right for a pilot and is precisely the profile that does not survive as a permanent
shape.

11. Aggregators and marketplaces

Full detail in the Aggregators And Shared-Cost Support Models chapter and the
chapters that follow it.

The take rates that could be verified

Almost nobody publishes a commission rate. Of ~20 marketplaces and operators
probed, exactly four disclose real numbers on their own property:

GetYourGuide explicitly refuses to publish: "Rates may vary depending on your
country of operation — the exact amount will be shared after you sign up." Third-party
estimates put it at 20–30%. Viator could not be verified at all — every supplier URL
returns a hard 403.

Booking software: Rezdy A$49–249/mo + 3% (and it is Australian, and what
TrailHopper and Escapegoat both use) · Bókun $0–499/mo + 1–1.5%, 0% on Viator ·
Checkfront $99/mo + 3% · TrekkSoft €49–249 + 2–3% · Regiondo €59–99 on a one-year
contract · Ridenet (self-serve e-bike platform) 17% of revenue, $10/vehicle/year
minimum — the only take rate anyone discloses openly.

What this does to the model. The draft assumes $40/rider CAC. On a
$189 product a 20% take is $38 and a 30% take is $57 — so $40 is right at the
optimistic end and understated at the realistic end, and it is a commission off the
top, not a marketing spend you can throttle. At 30%, contribution per rider falls
from $124 to about $107, and break-even rises from ~6.1 to about 7.1 riders per
operating day.

Two channel findings that change the operating model

1. Airbnb Experiences is the most aligned channel in existence for this product, at
20%. The customer is already sitting in an Airbnb in the region, and Airbnb surfaces
experiences to guests who have booked stays nearby. No other channel matches intent,
geography and timing that precisely — and it routes around the fragmented,
low-loyalty short-let-host referral problem by using the platform the hosts already use.
The single-day format fits a weekend ride exactly.

2. You cannot run a minimum-numbers policy and stay on GetYourGuide. Their published
Performance Quality Standards require a supplier cancellation rate of 1.0% or lower
and a no-show rate of 0.2% or lower, on a 90-day rolling basis, or activities are
removed from the platform.

This is the sharpest operational constraint in the entire scan. Quorum dispatch —
"the van runs if we get four" — is normal industry practice (Trans Cascadia, Hike n
Bike, Hoodoo, Slow Days). It is also incompatible with OTA distribution. Either the
product runs for one couple, or it uses quorum and sells direct plus Airbnb
Experiences.

There is a third way, and it is already in use: price per vehicle. Buller
Adventures sells "$250 per trip (includes up to 5 passengers + bikes)". The small
group pays for the empty seats, nothing is ever cancelled, and the volume discount
becomes the marketing.

And the rest

Two things are also clear from the regional sweeps:

The majors do not use OTAs. Backroads, Butterfield & Robinson, DuVine, Trek
Travel, VBT, Macs Adventure, Headwater, Inntravel, UTracks and Saddle Skedaddle all
sell through their own booking engines, with no Rezdy/Bókun/FareHarbor/Viator
footprint visible (the The global majors — apps, the wine-logistics void, and who
owns whom chapter). Multi-day self-guided is sold direct. The real wholesale
layer is invisible B2B — Radweg-Reisen sells ~100 own-operated tours to
Wiederverkäufer, Austria Radreisen runs an agency portal, La Rioja Bike Tours is a
white-label ground handler for international agencies — and none of them publish
commission rates.

The day-tour end is a different market, and FareHarbor owns it. Across New
Zealand, California and Canada, FareHarbor appears at Explore Marlborough, Bike Hire
Marlborough, Wine Tours by Bike, Napier City Bike Hire, Central Cycle Trail, Getaway
Adventures, Calistoga Bikeshop, Sonoma Adventures, Mac Bike Rentals, Off Road
Adventures and Lakeside Eco-Sports. Others in use: Checkfront + Stripe (On Yer
Bike, Myra Canyon, Vivid Tours), Rezdy (Bike Tours Barcelona), Activitar
(Vine Hopper), TheFlyBook (Hoodoo, Ace It), WooCommerce (Takaro),
Lokki.rent (Alsa Cyclo Tours), Regiondo (Rüdesheim Tourist AG), and
WhatsApp only (Franschhoek Cycles, Mr Hugo, Italy Cycling Tour).

The only platform take rate anyone discloses openly is Ridenet, the Canadian
self-serve e-bike platform behind Westlake E-Bikes: "17% of revenue, $10 per
vehicle per year minimum" (the Canada — the unattended platform model chapter).

A useful hurdle rate: if a shared van cannot add more than 17% of revenue in
value over an unattended smart-lock rental, it is not worth running.

One signal of channel-cost pain, from an operator's own site: Coastal Wine
Cycles in Hawke's Bay tells customers to book direct "to avoid a $20 cancellation
fee charged through their online system" (the New World — Hawke's Bay chapter).