Ever since Discover Beijing Tours received its first post-pandemic booking through GetYourGuide, the OTA platform’s international reach and AI tools have helped the company increase its annual revenue by 35%.
Discover Beijing Tours’ story starts on the ground with Qing Ye working as a freelance tour guide in 2003. Five years of leading travelers around Beijing later, she became her own boss and founded Discover Beijing Tours, fueled by a passion for tours that dive deeper into local culture and history.
In those early years, Qing juggled it all on her own, from tours to business inquiries. That continued personal interaction with tourists would pay off. While guiding in 2019, Qing met a German couple who told her there weren’t many options for China on GetYourGuide yet. That same day, she went home and registered as a supplier on the platform.
Fast-forward to after the pandemic, and GetYourGuide is where Qing received her first bookings once China reopened, helping her business stay afloat. Now, GetYourGuide accounts for 66% of Discover Beijing Tours’ bookings. Having welcomed 80,000 guests last year, Qing isn’t flying solo anymore either; success has grown the business to 28 guides, 34 vehicles, and 8 additional office staff.
“GetYouGuide changed my business model,” says Qing. “It made my company a team now.”
Here, Qing discusses how she has adapted to her growing success with GetYourGuide — including leveraging the OTA platform’s global audience, AI tools, and reviews to improve her business.
How would you describe your experience with GetYourGuide so far?
It’s been an amazing journey. Lots of work, that’s true, but I’m satisfied. We’ve done quite well.
Many of my guide friends and partners had to change their jobs during the three years of the pandemic. Once China reopened in 2023, I immediately updated my tours on different platforms. We got our first booking the same day we uploaded a tour on GetYourGuide. I still remember the date: March 18, 2023.
This single booking gave me a lot of hope and confidence, and made me realize how powerful and how effective GetYourGuide really is.
I was surprised by how quickly the bookings were coming in. GetYourGuide brought our business back to life. Otherwise, we would have all had to change our jobs.
Have you noticed any change in your customers since working with GetYourGuide?
Before the pandemic, we mainly had tourists from English-speaking countries. With GetYourGuide, we have tourists from all over the world. We now see travelers from Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. The European market is now our biggest.
Also, before the pandemic, I found that people tended to plan their trips far in advance. Now, most of our bookings are made one week or so before arrival. With our Forbidden City walking tour, some tourists even book at the last minute, like half an hour before departure.
How does GetYourGuide fit into your overall marketing strategy?
GetYourGuide is our most important sales channel, and our most important partner for our whole business strategy; 66% of our bookings come from GetYourGuide.
I never thought there would be so many tourists who would book tours from the platform. That totally changed our sales model.
At first, our office staff managed all our OTAs together. Later, we got more and more bookings from GetYourGuide, so we made a team of three people just to handle and maintain GetYourGuide.
Which GetYourGuide tools have been the most valuable to you?
The GetYourGuide AI content creator is our most valuable. We had a difficult time finding titles and short descriptions within the character limits because English is our second language. Also, I used to work as a guide and not as an “office person”, so writing good descriptions is really hard for me.
Since I found this tool, creating new products has become much easier.
I just need to find some nice photos, make some small changes, add the price, and then I can publish a tour. Before, a product would sometimes take one or two days to create, because I checked every little thing to make sure we looked professional. Now, with that tool, you actually are professional.
Do you have a specific example of when a GetYourGuide review made you change your product?
One time, we had a strange review. It praised our guide as professional and how they learned a lot from the tour, but they said they never entered the Forbidden City, even though they had already completed the tour. Later, we realized they expected to go inside every building, like ancient buildings, which are not open to the public.
To avoid misunderstandings, we added an indoor exhibition to our Forbidden City tour to give everyone a feeling of going inside the building.
If you were talking to another tour operator who wasn’t sure about working with OTAs, what would you tell them?
I would tell them that working with OTAs like GetYourGuide actually gets you access to a huge global market, which you never could have done on your own.
For a local business like ours, I noticed it’s the most effective way to receive constant bookings and build international visibility. We just need to focus on our service, and the platform will bring the tourists. You don’t have to invest any money to do marketing. We can just focus on our performance, which makes things easy.
What advice would you give someone who was just starting to work with GetYourGuide?
In this competitive market, create unique and original tours that make you stand out, and spend time learning the GetYourGuide backend well. When you create tours, it’s very important to have a clear title, shorter descriptions, and nice photos to attract travelers.
Another important thing is to keep your service consistent: reply to customers quickly, maintain high quality, and focus on good reviews. It takes time. You just need to be patient and keep working hard.
Key Takeaways
- Surviving the pandemic: Discover Beijing Tours credits GetYourGuide for keeping them in the tourism business after COVID.
- Achieving greater success: Since partnering with GetYourGuide, Discover Beijing Tours has seen a 35% increase in its annual revenue. On April 4, 2026, they hit a new high: arranging 34 tour guides and 54 vehicles in a single day.
- Growing together: The company started as a one-woman show and now employs 70 more people, including a dedicated team for GetYourGuide bookings.
- Attracting varied clientele: With GetYourGuide, Discover Beijing Tours welcomes far more European guests, with Europe now being its biggest market. During the last 12 months, eight of their top 10 source markets for GetYourGuide bookings were European countries.
- Utilizing valuable GetYourGuide tools: Discover Beijing Tours uses GetYourGuide’s AI content creator to save time and attract more guests when uploading products.
