Aggregators And Shared-Cost Support Models

Captured 2026-08-12. Evidence tags: [VERIFIED] = read on the company's own site
(including help centres reached via their open JSON APIs); [SECONDARY] = press,
forum, blog or third-party comparison; [NOT FOUND] = looked for, could not
retrieve. Currencies as listed.

Method note. Two techniques cracked most of the paywalled material once the
search quota ran out: harvesting sitemap.xml and robots.txt with a browser
user-agent, and reading Cloudflare-blocked help centres through their open Zendesk
JSON APIs — that is how FareHarbor's and TourRadar's fee tables were obtained.

Booking software — the layer almost every day operator in this sector sits on

All [VERIFIED] on the vendor's own pricing page unless noted.

FareHarbor — 6%, and the traveller pays it

FareHarbor is the dominant engine in this sector (it appears at a dozen operators
across NZ, California and Canada — see the New World chapters). Its pricing page
is an empty JS shell, but the Zendesk JSON API behind its help centre is open.

From FareHarbor's own help centre,
updated 2026-06-30 [VERIFIED]:

"The new booking fee of 6%…"

applying only to operators live 12+ months who "processed less than $35,000 USD in
online direct bookings in the previous 12 months." Crucially:

"This fee is automatically added to the activity price" and "FareHarbor updates
the total price of your activities to include the booking fee automatically."

OTA and affiliate bookings are exempt. A separate 2% API fee
(source)
is operator-borne.

⚠️ CORRECTED — the original conclusion was the reverse of the source. See C-1 in
the Audit of the aggregator and shared-support research chapter.

A correction worth carrying: competitors present FareHarbor's 6% as universal.
FareHarbor's own document conditions it on the sub-$35k threshold — so a new
Australian operator would pay it, and would grow out of it. And because the fee is
added to the customer's price rather than deducted from the operator's, it
functions as a 6% price rise on a small operator, not a 6% margin cut. Australia is
in scope.

FareHarbor's article states THREE cumulative conditions. Only two were quoted
here. The third is a fixed historical cut-off:

"The business has been using FareHarbor for at least 365 days as of October 3,
2024"

A new operator signing up in 2026 cannot satisfy that, and so on the plain text
would NOT pay the 6% at all — the opposite of what this section concluded.

"Australia is in scope" is unsourced. The only geographies named anywhere in
FareHarbor's fee documents are the US/Puerto Rico (billing mechanics) and
Guam/French Polynesia (the API-fee carve-out). That sentence was an assertion inside
a [VERIFIED] block and is withdrawn.

Net effect on the model is inverted: direct bookings are free of the 6%, while
OTA and affiliate bookings — exempt from the 6% — still attract the 2% API fee,
which is operator-borne. So the cost sits on the OTA channel, not the direct one.

Marketplaces.

TourRadar — the only OTA that publishes a full fee table

From their operator help centre,
verbatim [VERIFIED]:

Payment fee by currency: AUD 1.7%, NZD 3.0%, USD 2.9%, CAD 2.5%, EUR 1.9%,
GBP 1.9%. No upfront or monthly fees. Note they also "charge the Platform Service
Fee on cancelled bookings".

"There are NO upfront or monthly fees… Operators ONLY pay per booking."

And a trap: TourRadar charges its Platform Service Fee on cancelled bookings —
"TourRadar will charge the Platform Service Fee on cancelled bookings in line with
the Operator Contract"
(source).

A second article
says "To find your commission rate check your contract on the Operator Dashboard" —
so 15.25% is the published reference rate, not necessarily universal.
tourradar.com/suppliers and /partners now return 410 Gone; the live operator
site is operator.tourradar.com.

An Australian operator on the TourRadar marketplace pays roughly 18.7% all-in
(15.25% commission + 1.75% technology + 1.7% AUD payment processing).

GetYourGuide — explicitly refuses to publish a rate

On getyourguide.supply [VERIFIED]:

"There is no cost for adding and maintaining an activity… What is the commission
fee? Rates may vary depending on your country of operation — the exact amount
will be shared after you sign up."

Verified surcharges from their
help centre:

• +2% extra commission for bi-weekly rather than monthly payouts — "Cost +2%
  extra commission rate on top of your current contractual commission rate"
  (article 14148314384029). Faster cash flow costs two points.
• 10% GST applied on top of commission for Australian suppliers not
  GST-registered: "From December 2024, GetYourGuide applies a 10% GST to commissions
  for suppliers without a registered GST number" (article 24750306116125).
  Register for GST before listing. NZ equivalent is 15%.
• Cancellation clawback: a "negative commission adjustment, representing 25% of the
  retail price" in certain cancellation cases (article 27692036293021).

Commission is deducted from retail before payout, and GetYourGuide acts as Merchant
of Record: "you are still legally required to issue an invoice for the total booking
amount."

Viator — could not verify

[NOT FOUND]. Every supplier URL (supplier.viator.com, /supplier-terms,
travelagents.viator.com, Tripadvisor operator terms) returns a hard 403 from
this environment, to both WebFetch and curl with a browser UA. Their Zendesk is
closed. No rate is claimed here.

Cycling-specific resellers.

BikeTours.com — the standout, and it publishes everything

Formerly biketoursdirect.com (the old domain 301s). On
/partners/tour-operators/ [VERIFIED]:

"Our typical commission rate is 20%. We prefer to operate with gross prices, and
we DO NOT build commission on top of the tour price you offer travelers who
contact you directly."

• Free to list; selection criteria explicitly include "commission rate"
• Operators are paid 30–45 days before tour start, minus commission
• Travellers separately pay a €25 / $30 pp booking fee
• Travel agents get 5% on the
  base tour price
• Entry requires 2+ years trading and liability/insolvency insurance

That "DO NOT build commission on top" clause is the mechanism behind their consumer
promise — "You pay us the same price you'd see on the local tour company's
website!" — they take 20% out of the operator's gross, not on top of it.

Payment terms, cash-flow relevant [VERIFIED]: "We charge the client a
US$500/person deposit and US$30/person booking fee… 60 days before tour start, we
receive final payment from client. 30-45 days before tour start, we send full
payment to you (minus agreed-upon commission)."

They will not name which European operators they represent — no supplier index in
a 1,511-URL sitemap, no attribution on tour pages. Almost certainly a deliberate
disintermediation defence.

The full stack: operator gives 20% → BikeTours keeps ~15% → agent takes 5% →
traveller pays €25/$30 pp on top.

20% is the number to price against for any marketplace distribution. Note the
anti-undercutting clause: they will not let you sell cheaper direct. That is a real
constraint on a business whose best channel is a local short-let host.

Freewheeling France — a paid directory, no booking, no cut

The real page is
/how-to-advertise.html
(the /advertise paths genuinely 404). No rate card exists; their
advertiser T&Cs confirm the
model: 12-month prepaid listings, invoiced, non-refundable, uploaded only after
payment clears. Price quoted by email only. [VERIFIED]

Dead ends, confirmed

• biketournetwork.com — a parked GoDaddy lander
• bikinghikingtours.com — not registered at all (WHOIS: "No match")
• Cyclando is a tour operator, not an aggregator (see the Region — Italy, Spain
  and Portugal chapter)
• Girolibero has no B2B page on either domain

White-label wholesale exists, but it is rare and gated

• Radweg-Reisen runs a whole second domain for it —
  cycling-holiday.com/b2b — with downloadable
  per-tour B2B product sheets and traveller documentation in DE/EN/NL/FR/IT/ES.
  [VERIFIED]

  Supplying route notes in six languages is wholesale supply, not referral. That
  is the tell for a genuine B2B operation.

• Austria Radreisen has an agency login.

• Net rates are contact-gated in both cases. Seven of nine other operators probed
  have no B2B surface whatsoever.

Trade commission — nobody publishes a number

[NOT FOUND] at UTracks (checked against their complete 1,906-URL sitemap — the only
agent asset is a newsletter signup), Macs Adventure, Saddle Skedaddle, Freedom Treks,
Headwater, Exodus (page exists, rate gated), or Inntravel — whose page lists
"Commission on eligible holiday components" and still carries an unresolved
editing note reading "(FINANCE TO CONFIRM)".

One live lead: World Expeditions has a page titled "Travel Agent Resources |
Commissions | FAQs" explicitly covering UTracks — but it 302-redirects to the
homepage from an Australian IP, and the .ca/.co.uk mirrors 403. It is
retrievable from a US or Canadian IP.

The only verified trade rate found anywhere in the sector is BikeTours.com's 5%.