How to build a website like Klook

How Klook transformed travel experiences

Klook has revolutionized how travelers discover and book activities worldwide. Founded in 2014 by Eric Gnock Fah and Bernie Xiong in Hong Kong, the platform started with a simple insight: booking travel activities was fragmented, time-consuming, and often required navigating language barriers and unreliable local websites.

Today, Klook operates in over 400 destinations across Asia-Pacific, Europe, and beyond, facilitating millions of bookings annually. The platform generates over $600 million in gross bookings volume, connecting travelers with more than 100,000 activities ranging from theme park tickets to cooking classes. Klook's success stems from solving a real pain point: making travel experiences as easy to book as flights and hotels.

The founders initially struggled to raise funding, with investors questioning whether people would actually book activities in advance. But Klook's mobile-first approach and focus on Asian markets proved prescient. The platform now serves as the primary booking channel for major attractions like Tokyo Disneyland and Universal Studios Singapore.

How does Klook work?

Klook operates as a two-sided marketplace connecting experience providers with travelers seeking activities and services. The platform aggregates inventory from local tour operators, attractions, restaurants, and transportation providers, then presents these options through a unified booking interface.

For travelers, Klook simplifies the discovery and booking process. Users can search by destination, browse curated collections, compare prices and reviews, and book instantly with mobile tickets. The platform offers last-minute bookings, flexible cancellation policies, and customer support in multiple languages. Many bookings provide instant confirmation and mobile vouchers, eliminating the need for printed tickets.

For suppliers, Klook provides access to international travelers without requiring significant marketing investments. Experience providers list their activities on the platform, manage availability through Klook's dashboard, and receive bookings with customer details and payment guaranteed. The platform handles customer service, payment processing, and marketing, allowing local operators to focus on delivering great experiences.

Klook's business model centers on commission fees, typically ranging from 15-30% of the booking value depending on the activity type and volume. The company also generates revenue through advertising fees from suppliers who want premium placement, and value-added services like travel insurance and mobile connectivity products.

Essential features for a travel booking marketplace

Building a marketplace similar to Klook requires understanding the specific needs of both travelers and experience providers. Unlike simple e-commerce platforms, travel marketplaces must handle complex inventory management, time-sensitive bookings, and location-specific requirements.

Real-time availability and calendar management forms the backbone of any activities marketplace. Unlike physical products, experiences have limited capacity and specific time slots. Your platform needs sophisticated availability tracking that updates in real-time as bookings are made. Suppliers must be able to set capacity limits, block out dates, and adjust availability for different time slots throughout the day. This prevents overbooking disasters that can ruin customer trust and damage supplier relationships.

For example, a cooking class might have space for 12 people at 2 PM but be fully booked for the 6 PM session. Your system needs to reflect this complexity while presenting a simple interface to customers.

Location-based search and discovery enables travelers to find relevant activities for their destination. This goes beyond basic geographic search to include proximity filtering, neighborhood-based browsing, and integration with popular landmarks and hotels. Many travelers search for "things to do near my hotel" or "activities within 30 minutes of Times Square," so your platform needs robust location intelligence.

Successful implementation requires integration with mapping services, geocoding for activity locations, and intelligent search that understands local geography. Your search should also handle common variations in place names and provide suggestions for nearby alternatives when exact matches aren't available.

Flexible booking and payment processing accommodates the diverse needs of travel activities. Some experiences require immediate confirmation, while others need supplier approval. Payment timing varies too, some activities charge upfront, others allow pay-on-arrival, and many offer flexible cancellation with varying refund policies.

Your payment system must handle multiple currencies, various payment methods popular in different regions, and complex fee structures. Split payments become crucial when dealing with group bookings or multi-day experiences with different suppliers.

Mobile-optimized experience design reflects how travelers actually book activities. Unlike planning flights months in advance, activity bookings often happen spontaneously while travelers explore a destination. Your platform needs to work flawlessly on mobile devices with fast loading times, easy navigation, and simplified checkout processes.

Mobile tickets and QR code generation eliminate the hassle of printing confirmations, while offline access ensures bookings remain accessible even with poor connectivity. Push notifications for booking confirmations, activity reminders, and last-minute changes keep travelers informed throughout their journey.

Review and rating systems build trust between travelers and suppliers while providing valuable feedback for continuous improvement. Travel experiences are highly subjective and personal, so review systems need to capture different aspects of the experience, guide quality, organization, value for money, and overall satisfaction.

Implementing photo reviews, verified booking badges, and response mechanisms for suppliers creates a transparent ecosystem where quality providers naturally rise to the top. Review aggregation and sentiment analysis help identify trending activities and potential issues before they affect more customers.

Multi-language and currency support enables global reach while maintaining local relevance. Travelers expect to browse and book in their preferred language and currency, while suppliers need interfaces that work in their local context. This requires more than simple translation, cultural adaptation of booking flows, payment methods, and customer service approaches.

Currency conversion needs real-time exchange rates with clear fee disclosure, while language support includes both static content translation and dynamic review translation to help travelers understand experiences described in other languages.

Analyzing Klook's competitive landscape

Understanding existing players helps identify opportunities for differentiation and potential challenges in the activities marketplace space.

Viator dominates Western markets with strong integration into TripAdvisor's ecosystem. Acquired by TripAdvisor in 2014, Viator uses the massive review database and traffic from the parent platform. The service focuses heavily on guided tours and excursions in Europe and North America, with professional photography and detailed descriptions that set high content standards.

Viator's strength lies in comprehensive coverage of popular tourist destinations and smooth integration with trip planning tools. However, their Western focus creates opportunities in emerging markets, and their traditional tour emphasis leaves gaps in unique local experiences and last-minute bookings.

GetYourGuide emphasizes curated experiences with a strong European base and focus on premium positioning. The Berlin-based platform differentiates through editorial curation, working directly with suppliers to develop exclusive experiences and maintaining strict quality standards. Their content marketing strategy positions activities as must-do experiences rather than commoditized tours.

GetYourGuide's weakness lies in limited coverage of Asia-Pacific markets and higher price points that may exclude budget-conscious travelers. Their curated approach also means fewer options in each destination compared to aggregator models.

Airbnb Experiences offers authentic local perspectives through its host-driven model. Rather than working with commercial tour operators, Airbnb enables locals to create and host activities, resulting in more personal and unique offerings. This peer-to-peer approach creates experiences that feel authentic and often provide insider access to local communities.

However, Airbnb Experiences faces challenges with quality consistency, limited availability in many destinations, and higher barriers for travelers seeking traditional tourist activities. The platform works best for experienced travelers comfortable with uncertainty.

Regional specialists like KKday (Taiwan), Tiqets (Netherlands), and Pelago (Singapore) succeed by focusing deeply on specific markets. These platforms understand local consumer behavior, payment preferences, and supplier relationships better than global competitors. They often offer more comprehensive coverage of local activities and better customer service in local languages.

Regional players typically struggle with international expansion and technology investment compared to well-funded global platforms, creating opportunities for focused competitors with better technology and operations.

Step-by-step guide to building your activities marketplace

Creating a successful alternative to Klook requires a systematic approach that balances speed to market with long-term scalability. The key lies in starting focused and expanding based on real user feedback rather than trying to replicate Klook's full feature set immediately.

Start with a specific niche and geographic focus rather than attempting to compete broadly with established players. Klook itself began by focusing on mobile-savvy travelers in Hong Kong before expanding across Asia. Your niche might be adventure activities in national parks, food experiences in a specific city, or cultural workshops in your region.

This focused approach allows you to deeply understand your suppliers and customers, build strong local relationships, and achieve marketplace liquidity more quickly. Success in one niche provides proof of concept for expansion into adjacent areas.

Validate demand through direct customer research before building any technology. Identify potential travelers in your target niche and understand their current booking behavior, pain points, and willingness to try new platforms. Many founders skip this step and build features nobody wants.

Conduct interviews with both potential customers and suppliers. Ask travelers how they currently discover and book activities, what frustrates them about existing options, and what would convince them to try a new platform. Question suppliers about their biggest challenges in reaching customers, current marketing costs, and what features would make them willing to list on another platform.

Build relationships with key suppliers early since supply typically drives demand in activity marketplaces. Travelers won't visit a platform with limited options, but suppliers will consider listing on platforms with minimal traffic if the onboarding process is easy and the value proposition is clear.

Start by identifying the highest-quality suppliers in your niche. These might not be the largest operators but rather those offering unique experiences, excellent reviews, or underserved demand. Personal outreach works better than mass emails, visit suppliers in person when possible, attend industry events, and use any personal connections you have in the travel industry.

Create your minimum viable platform focusing on core booking functionality rather than trying to match every feature offered by established competitors. Your MVP needs to handle basic search and discovery, detailed activity listings with photos and descriptions, availability checking, secure payment processing, and booking confirmation.

Advanced features like reviews, mobile apps, multiple languages, and complex reporting can wait until you've validated core demand. The goal is launching quickly to start learning from real users rather than spending months building features that might not matter.

Implement trust and safety measures from launch since travelers are often booking unfamiliar activities in unknown locations. This includes supplier verification processes, clear refund policies, customer service channels, and insurance coverage where appropriate. Trust issues kill marketplaces faster than missing features.

Develop simple but effective supplier vetting that includes business license verification, reference checks, and activity quality assessments. Create clear terms of service that protect both travelers and suppliers while establishing your platform's role in dispute resolution.

Focus on mobile experience and instant confirmation to differentiate from traditional booking methods. Many activities still require email confirmations, phone calls, or picking up physical tickets. Offering instant mobile confirmations with QR codes provides immediate value to travelers and reduces operational overhead for suppliers.

This capability requires real-time inventory integration with suppliers, which may mean starting with larger operators who have existing systems and gradually onboarding smaller providers as you develop simpler integration tools.

Launch with a small group of engaged early adopters rather than attempting a broad market launch. Identify travel enthusiasts, bloggers, or local community groups who might be interested in trying new experiences. Offer incentives like discounts or exclusive access to build initial traction and gather feedback.

Monitor key metrics like conversion rates, booking completion, customer satisfaction, and supplier adoption. Focus on improving these fundamentals before investing in growth marketing or feature expansion.

Iterate based on user behavior and feedback rather than assumptions about what features matter most. Track how users navigate your platform, where they encounter friction, and what leads to successful bookings. Conduct follow-up interviews with both successful and unsuccessful users to understand their experience.

Many successful marketplace founders discover their initial assumptions were wrong. The booking flow you thought was simple might confuse users, or features you considered essential might be ignored while users request capabilities you hadn't considered.

Cost and development approaches

Building an activities marketplace involves significant upfront investment in technology, operations, and market development. Understanding the different approaches and their associated costs helps you choose the path that best fits your resources and timeline.

Custom development from scratch provides maximum flexibility but requires substantial technical expertise and financial resources. A basic activities marketplace with core booking functionality typically costs $100,000-300,000 to develop, with enterprise-grade platforms reaching $500,000 or more.

This approach makes sense if you have specific technical requirements that existing platforms can't accommodate, access to experienced development talent, and sufficient funding to sustain development through multiple iterations. Custom development also means ongoing maintenance costs, security updates, and infrastructure scaling as you grow.

The main advantage lies in complete control over features, user experience, and technical architecture. You can optimize specifically for your target market and integrate with local payment systems, suppliers, or other services exactly as needed. However, the opportunity cost is enormous, months of development time that could be spent acquiring customers and suppliers.

No-code marketplace builders like Sharetribe enable rapid deployment at a fraction of custom development costs. With Sharetribe, you can launch a fully functional activities marketplace in weeks rather than months, starting with plans under $100 per month.

Sharetribe includes built-in booking management, payment processing through Stripe Connect, availability calendars, review systems, and mobile-responsive design. The platform handles complex marketplace functionality like commission splits, tax calculations, and dispute resolution that would take months to develop and perfect manually.

For activities marketplaces specifically, Sharetribe supports time-based bookings, location search, flexible pricing models, and integration with calendar systems. You can customize the look and feel, add custom fields for activity descriptions, and integrate with third-party services as needed.

The limitation lies in reduced flexibility compared to custom development. While Sharetribe allows significant customization and even custom code additions, you're ultimately working within a platform's architectural constraints. For most marketplace founders, this trade-off strongly favors faster time to market and lower development costs.

Hybrid approaches combine no-code platforms with custom development to balance speed and flexibility. You might launch on Sharetribe to validate your concept and build initial traction, then add custom features or integrations as specific needs emerge.

This approach works particularly well for activities marketplaces that need specialized integrations with local suppliers, payment systems, or regulatory requirements. Sharetribe's developer platform allows custom code additions while maintaining the core marketplace infrastructure.

WordPress with marketplace plugins offers a middle ground between no-code builders and custom development. Plugins like WooCommerce Bookings or WP Travel provide activities-specific functionality on top of WordPress's content management capabilities.

This approach works well if you have WordPress expertise and want to integrate closely with content marketing efforts. However, creating a fully functional activities marketplace requires combining multiple plugins, which can create compatibility issues and security vulnerabilities. The total cost often exceeds dedicated marketplace platforms when you factor in development time and ongoing maintenance.

Why Sharetribe works for activities marketplaces

Activities marketplaces have specific requirements that general e-commerce platforms struggle to handle effectively. Sharetribe was designed specifically for marketplace businesses and includes features that directly address the challenges of booking time-sensitive experiences.

Built-in availability management eliminates one of the most complex technical challenges in activities marketplaces. Sharetribe's calendar system handles time-slot bookings, capacity limits, and real-time availability updates without requiring custom development. Suppliers can easily block dates, set different pricing for peak times, and manage multiple booking options for the same activity.

This functionality would typically require months of custom development to implement correctly, including complex database design, user interface development, and extensive testing to prevent overbooking scenarios.

Commission-based payments through Stripe Connect handle the financial complexity of marketplace transactions. When a traveler books an activity, Sharetribe automatically splits payment between your platform commission and the supplier payout, manages tax calculations, and handles different payout schedules.

This addresses a major pain point for marketplace founders: payment processing for multi-party transactions involves complex legal and technical requirements that vary by jurisdiction. Sharetribe's integration with Stripe Connect ensures compliance while providing transparent fee structures for both platforms and suppliers.

Location-based search and mapping work out of the box without requiring GIS expertise or expensive mapping APIs. Activities can be tagged with specific locations, and travelers can search by destination, browse nearby options, and view activity locations on integrated maps.

Custom development of location functionality typically requires significant investment in mapping services, geocoding systems, and search optimization that may not justify the cost for early-stage marketplaces.

Mobile-responsive design ensures your marketplace works smoothly across devices without requiring separate app development. Given that many activity bookings happen spontaneously while traveling, mobile optimization is crucial for user experience and conversion rates.

Sharetribe's themes are optimized for mobile booking flows, with simplified navigation, touch-friendly interfaces, and fast loading times that work well even with poor connectivity.

Flexible customization options allow you to differentiate your platform as you grow. You can customize visual design, add specific fields for activity descriptions, integrate with local payment systems, and even add completely custom functionality through Sharetribe's developer platform.

This flexibility means you don't outgrow the platform as your business scales, you can continue adding unique features while maintaining the reliable infrastructure that handles growth in users and transaction volume.

Proven scalability means your platform can handle growth from initial validation to thousands of daily bookings without requiring infrastructure changes. Sharetribe powers successful marketplaces processing millions of dollars in transactions, so technical scalability won't limit your business growth.

The alternative, building custom infrastructure that scales reliably, typically requires dedicated DevOps expertise and ongoing monitoring that diverts resources from business development.

Learning from Klook's success principles

Klook's growth offers valuable lessons for aspiring marketplace founders, particularly around market expansion, supplier relationships, and customer experience optimization.

Mobile-first design drove early adoption in markets where smartphone penetration exceeded desktop internet access. Klook's founders recognized that travelers increasingly planned activities on mobile devices, often while already at their destination. This insight led to streamlined mobile booking flows and instant confirmation features that provided immediate value.

Your activities marketplace should prioritize mobile experience from launch, ensuring that browsing, booking, and accessing confirmations work smoothly on smartphones. This means simplified navigation, fast loading times, and booking processes optimized for small screens and touch interfaces.

Strategic geographic expansion built on proven playbooks rather than opportunistic market entry. Klook succeeded by focusing on Asia-Pacific markets where they understood cultural preferences, payment methods, and regulatory requirements. Each new market entry built on lessons learned in previous expansions.

Rather than trying to compete globally from launch, focus on markets where you have inherent advantages, local knowledge, supplier relationships, or underserved customer segments. Perfect your model in one market before expanding to similar markets with comparable characteristics.

Supplier relationship management goes beyond simple listing agreements to include marketing support, training, and business development partnerships. Klook invests in helping suppliers optimize their offerings, improve their service quality, and increase their bookings through the platform.

Treat your best suppliers as strategic partners rather than commodity vendors. Provide them with booking analytics, customer feedback, and marketing tools that help them succeed. Successful suppliers become your best advocates for attracting additional suppliers and improving overall platform quality.

Customer service excellence builds trust in a marketplace where travelers often book unfamiliar experiences in foreign destinations. Klook maintains 24/7 customer support in multiple languages and empowers service representatives to resolve issues quickly, even when that means absorbing costs.

Invest in customer service infrastructure early, even if it seems expensive relative to your transaction volume. Poor customer service destroys trust faster than any other factor in travel marketplaces, where customers often have limited recourse if experiences don't meet expectations.

Content marketing and SEO drive organic discovery of activities and destinations. Klook publishes destination guides, activity recommendations, and travel tips that rank highly in search results and provide value beyond booking functionality.

Develop content that helps travelers discover activities they might not have known existed. This content serves dual purposes: attracting potential customers through search engines and educating them about the value of booking through your platform rather than directly with suppliers.

Getting started with your activities marketplace

Building a successful activities marketplace requires balancing ambitious vision with pragmatic execution. Start with focused market validation, launch quickly with core functionality, and expand based on real user feedback rather than assumptions about what features matter most.

The travel industry rewards platforms that solve genuine problems for both suppliers and travelers. Focus on understanding these problems deeply in your chosen niche before worrying about competing feature-for-feature with established players like Klook.

Sharetribe provides the technical foundation to launch quickly and iterate based on learning, while Klook's success demonstrates the long-term potential for well-executed activities marketplaces. The key lies in starting focused, launching fast, and building relationships that create value for everyone in your marketplace ecosystem.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to build a website like Klook?

Building an activities marketplace like Klook costs vary widely by approach. Custom development typically starts at $100,000-300,000, while no-code platforms like Sharetribe enable launch for under $100/month. The key is starting focused rather than trying to replicate all of Klook's features immediately.

What features does a travel activities marketplace need?

Essential features include real-time availability management, location-based search, secure booking and payments, mobile optimization, review systems, and multi-language support. Start with core booking functionality and add advanced features based on user feedback rather than trying to build everything upfront.

How long does it take to launch an activities booking platform?

Timeline depends on your approach. With Sharetribe, you can launch in 1-2 weeks with core functionality. Custom development typically takes 6+ months. The key is launching quickly to start learning from real users rather than spending months on features that might not matter.

How does Klook make money?

Klook generates revenue primarily through commission fees (15-30% of booking value), plus advertising fees from suppliers wanting premium placement and value-added services like travel insurance. This model aligns platform success with supplier success, as both benefit from increased bookings.

What makes Klook different from competitors like Viator?

Klook focuses on mobile-first experience and Asian markets, while Viator emphasizes Western destinations integrated with TripAdvisor. Klook offers more last-minute bookings and instant confirmations, while GetYourGuide focuses on curated premium experiences in Europe.

How do I find suppliers for my activities marketplace?

Start with direct outreach to high-quality local operators in your niche. Attend tourism industry events, use personal connections, and focus on suppliers offering unique experiences rather than trying to compete on commodity tours. Personal relationships often work better than mass marketing for initial supplier acquisition.

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