GetYourGuide

How to assign a guide to a GetYourGuide booking

Updated 31 October 2026 by Ravid Efroni, founder of GuidePing, which sends guide offers on WhatsApp. Read the tool comparisons with that in mind.

Short answer

In the GetYourGuide Supplier Portal you can pick a guide for each booking. The guide needs a profile with name, photo and phone number, and the traveller sees who their guide is. The feature tells the traveller; GetYourGuide's help article does not say that it asks or notifies the guide. So get the guide's yes first, from the booking email, and then enter that name in the Guide field.

What the GetYourGuide Guides feature does

GetYourGuide added a Guides feature to the Supplier Portal, announced in an article on 3 November 2025 (GetYourGuide Supply). Per the help article (Assigning Guides to Bookings):

You create a profile for each guide: name, photo and phone number.
On a booking you choose the guide with "Select guide".
The traveller sees who their guide is. The phone number is shown from 1 hour before to 1 hour after the activity.
It is free for GetYourGuide suppliers.

This helps travellers find the right person at the meeting point, and it cuts down on messages asking who the guide is.

What it leaves out

The help article describes a field the supplier fills in. It does not describe the step before it: asking the guide whether they can do the tour and getting a yes. A name in the Guide field that nobody agreed with is worse than no name, because the traveller now expects that person.

No request to the guide described, and no yes or no recorded.
Only GetYourGuide bookings. Tours sold on Viator, Bókun or your website at the same time slot are not in the same view.
No supplier booking API or webhooks, according to a developer note (gyg_reader on GitHub), so other tools cannot pull bookings from GetYourGuide directly.

Operators who try to automate the booking emails themselves run into format problems: one Zapier community user found email parsers "very sensitive to different formats" from one agency to the next (thread).

The order that works

01The GetYourGuide booking email arrives. A forwarding rule in Gmail or Outlook passes it to GuidePing.
02GuidePing reads the email into a tour: date, time, product, language, number of guests, booking reference. Bookings for the same tour and time are added up.
03The tour is offered to a guide on WhatsApp, in your order, filtered by language, days off and other tours that day.
04The guide answers in their own words. A yes confirms them and sends a calendar link; a no or no answer moves the offer to the next guide.
05With the confirmed name in hand, you select that guide in the GetYourGuide Supplier Portal. The traveller sees a guide who agreed.

Step 5 stays manual, since GetYourGuide offers no way for other tools to write to the booking. It takes seconds once you know who is doing the tour.

Why a missing guide costs more on GetYourGuide

GetYourGuide measures suppliers on two numbers that a guide problem hits directly. From its Performance Quality Standards, updated 8 May 2026:

Standard	Target	What counts
No-show rate	0.2% or lower, rolling 90 days	Bookings GetYourGuide fully refunds after the traveller says you were not at the meeting or pick-up point
Cancellation rate	1.0% or lower, rolling 90 days	Cancellations you make that are not force majeure, such as severe weather

Activities that do not consistently meet the standards may be temporarily removed from the platform, and those that keep underperforming may be deactivated. At 0.2%, one missed tour in 500 bookings is already at the limit. A guide who does not turn up, or a tour you cancel because nobody confirmed, counts against you, not against the guide. The no-show report is for the opposite case, when the travellers did not come.

Changes and cancellations

A rebooked time or a cancellation comes as its own email. If those are forwarded too, GuidePing matches them to the booking by the GetYourGuide reference, so a duplicate or a re-sent email never adds guests twice. A new time is sent to the booked guide to confirm; if they cannot make it, the tour goes back to the next guide. When the last guests cancel, the guide is told they are no longer needed. Remember to change the Guide field in the portal if the guide changes.

Ways to handle GetYourGuide bookings with several guides

	Supplier Portal only	Booking tool with guide app	Forwarded emails + WhatsApp (GuidePing)
Guide is asked and answers	Not described	In the tool's app	On WhatsApp, in own words
Bookings from other platforms	No	If connected to the tool	Any platform that emails bookings
Next guide asked when one says no	By you	Varies	Yes, by your rules
Guide installs something	No	Yes	No
Traveller sees the guide	Yes	Depends on the tool	After you set the Guide field

TourDash also reads forwarded booking emails from GetYourGuide and other platforms; there, guides are asked inside the TourDash app (TourDash). If your guides already use WhatsApp and do not want another app, see tour guide scheduling on WhatsApp.

Questions

Does GetYourGuide notify the guide when I assign them?

GetYourGuide's help article on assigning guides describes choosing a guide per booking and showing the guide to the traveller. It does not describe a message to the guide asking whether they can do it, so plan to ask the guide yourself.

What does a guide profile on GetYourGuide need?

According to GetYourGuide, a guide profile needs a name, a photo and a phone number. The traveller can see the phone number from 1 hour before to 1 hour after the tour.

Is there a GetYourGuide API for suppliers to get bookings?

A developer note on GitHub says GetYourGuide offers suppliers no booking API or webhooks. The booking email and the Supplier Portal are what a small operator has to work with.

How do I handle changes and cancellations?

They arrive as separate emails. If the booking emails are forwarded to GuidePing, a time change asks the booked guide to confirm the new time and a cancellation removes the guests, releasing the guide when nobody is left.

What happens on GetYourGuide if my guide does not show up?

GetYourGuide counts it as a supplier no-show when it fully refunds a traveller who says nobody was at the meeting point. Its Performance Quality Standards ask for a no-show rate of 0.2% or lower over a rolling 90 days, and activities that keep missing the standards may be removed or deactivated.

How many cancellations does GetYourGuide allow a supplier?

The Performance Quality Standards ask for a cancellation rate of 1.0% or lower over a rolling 90 days, counting cancellations you make that are not caused by force majeure such as severe weather.

Does this work for Viator and Bókun too?

Yes. GuidePing reads booking emails from any platform that sends them, so tours from GetYourGuide, Viator, Bókun and your own website end up on one board.

See it with your own tours

Forward one booking email, a guide gets the offer on WhatsApp and answers in their own words. 30 days free, then €99 a month. No card.

Start free pilot

Sources

Features and prices are what each vendor published on the date read. Check the vendor before you decide.

Tour guide availability calendar (free template)
For freelance guides: one sheet of free days for every company you guide for, a free template, and how to share it read-only.
GetYourGuide commission for suppliers
The 20% to 30% rate, the 2% for twice-monthly payouts, the 25% fee when you cancel, payout dates, VAT and a worked example.
Tour guide scheduling software compared
18 tools side by side: how each asks a guide, whether it asks the next guide on its own, and what it costs.
Assigning guides to Viator bookings
Viator has no guide field: how bookings reach you, its response and cancellation rules, and an order that gets every tour a guide.