It all started with a single boat that solely ran private tours. Today, Starboard Boats has a fleet of 11 unique vessels and hosts some of Amsterdam’s most creative and highly rated experiences.
From boozy canal voyages and colorful tours on flower-covered vessels to spectacular Amsterdam Light Festival cruises, co-founder Guy Kuttner has built a business on the idea of “new-age tourism.” There’s even a Cloud Boat, where passengers can combine the vibe of a smoky Amsterdam coffeeshop with sightseeing on its iconic canals.
If you spot “powered by the Fun Group” on one of the Starboard Boats, that’s because the boat tour company operates under the larger Fun Group umbrella. Along with workshops in Prague and Budapest, another Fun Group darling is We Are Amsterdam. This sister company to Starboard Boats operates its “land” experiences in Amsterdam, like its ultra-popular Dutch waffle workshops.
“We thought about how we could replicate this success with the boats on shore as well,” Guy says. “We know that the city of Amsterdam is really fighting mass tourism and this kind of drunk tourism. We decided to join the city's efforts and change our whole portfolio to the kinds of products we know we can really run with a high quality.”
Here, Guy shares his journey, the challenges of staying original, how he views commission differently than most, and how his relationship with GetYourGuide has been instrumental in the success of Starboard Boats and We Are Amsterdam.
How did Starboard Boats start as a tour company in Amsterdam?
I moved to Amsterdam when I was 21, just to have fun, and I worked in nightlife and on pub crawls. Then I left for a while, traveling the world, until a Dutch friend, Timo Haaker, now co-founder and CMO, called me and said, “I know you have some experience with boats. I want to buy a boat and open a tour business. Maybe you can come back and be a skipper?” I told him, “I’ll come back, but not to be a skipper; we’re going to be partners.”
We started with one boat, and as demand grew, so did our little venture. We expanded into scooter rentals, walking tours, and bike tours — we did everything tourists wanted to. During COVID, we bought even more businesses, including a nightclub and more boats.
After doing so many things, we slowly started to cut back. We understood that giving a quality experience on a boat was our forte. That's what we wanted to focus on. We got our hands on six more licenses and doubled our fleet.
What makes your experiences unique?
We call it “new-age tourism.” It’s not the boring, “follow the flag” type of tour. We create a fun, interactive mix of history and modern Dutch life. We have 11 boats now, and each vessel has a central bar and a live host, never a “guide.”
The host tells you about the city and what it’s like to live here. Of course, there’s some history, as it’s everywhere in this city, and it’s fascinating, but we keep it fun. It’s about making people feel as comfortable as possible. We also have cultural activities like our stroopwafel workshop, which is a quick, interactive and delicious experience that doesn’t take up a whole day.
That creativity also comes with a challenge. Amsterdam is extremely competitive, and once an idea proves successful, others move quickly. After we proved the stroopwafel workshop concept, another supplier launched what we saw as a one-to-one copy, with the same duration, inclusions, and even the same product name.
The same thing happened with our flower boat, which we created with a local artist and connected to a charitable cause. Soon, similar flower-covered boats began appearing across the canals. Being copied is a compliment in one sense, but it also pushes us to raise our standards and keep coming up with ideas that others haven’t tried.
How did partnering with GetYourGuide help Starboard Boats scale?
When we started, we only offered private cruises. We saw that our private cruises were selling well and suggested we add a shared tour option. That skyrocketed like crazy. We had to build more boats. The growth of our fleet is largely thanks to GetYourGuide. They helped us understand the demand.
Significantly more bookings are coming from GetYourGuide compared to the other OTAs we work with.
How can GetYourGuide data help you grow your tour business?
The analytics are incredibly useful. When we were smaller, it was great to see where our customers were coming from. Now, we use the analytics feature to track our KPIs. We look at conversion rates and views. If a product has a lot of clicks but low conversion, we know customers are seeing something they don’t like, and we need to adjust it.
For example, if it’s raining for two weeks, we’ll change the photos to show our covered boats. The data helps us fine-tune our content to maximize bookings. We can also adapt to things we see and the feedback we have almost instantly. Let’s say a product is at a 5% conversion rate. If we change the main photo, some text, or the headline, we measure it. If it goes up by 0.2% or 0.4%, we're talking about thousands of Euros in revenue every year.
The data can surprise us, too. We discovered that the Dutch market is one of our top three for the stroopwafel workshop, because apparently, no Dutch person has ever made their own stroopwafel!
You’re one of Amsterdam’s top-rated suppliers. How does Starboard Boats maintain a five-star guest experience?
Our team understands why reviews are so important. Good reviews mean more work for them in the future, especially during the low season. We also incentivize them generously with prizes for the most and best reviews — no bribes. The reviews are very real, but tickets to an Ajax match or a free cruise for their family are nice rewards for being the perfect host.
Before they can host their own experience, each new recruit starts as a guest, then trains with an experienced host, and finally runs a cruise themselves with the host observing. We need to be confident that they can deliver a five-star experience every time, as that is the only option for us.
What motivates you to keep innovating?
We’re always looking for ways to be creative and make our resources work better, especially to fill the quieter weekdays. For instance, we collaborated with a local Amsterdam artist known as the Flowerbikeman — who has a wonderful story — to create the first Flowerboat.
We did something similar with our Cloud Boat, which we designed to offer a premium experience for people who want to enjoy a smoke on the canals. It’s about finding a need and filling it with a high-quality, creative product.
How does GetYourGuide compare to the other OTAs you work with?
GetYourGuide's supplier portal is the best by far. When we have our meeting every month with the whole staff, we usually show a lot of data from GetYourGuide.
We are low-tech, but this is a high-tech company. For us to get the data that GetYourGuide has is really priceless.
How do you launch new products, and is there an easy way to measure their success early on?
We use GetYourGuide to pilot. Before we invest heavily in our own marketing for a new concept, we’ll launch it on GetYourGuide to test the water. If it gets bookings and we see there’s demand, then we know we have a potential winner. It’s the best platform to test an idea with minimal risk.
To list a product on GetYourGuide is easier than even creating a landing page on your own website and running a marketing ad on it. All you have to do is just use the platform.
How does GetYourGuide fit into your marketing strategy?
I think the mistake many tour operators make when they decide not to partner with a good OTA is the way they view commission. We don’t see the commission as a fee; it’s literally assigned as part of our marketing budget.
GetYourGuide and other platforms provide services and exposure that would be far too expensive for us to achieve on our own. The biggest one is reach. GetYourGuide translates our products and promotes them in markets we would never be able to access without significantly more investment.
It easily opens up our business to a global audience.
How does GetYourGuide support you, both generally and when you encounter frustrations?
Our relationship with our account manager, Bjorn, has been amazing. He’s excellent and understands our business on a level you wouldn’t expect from someone external. He’s a true partner — and genuinely feels our frustrations and seeks out solutions. We know he’s as invested in our success as we are.
He’s kind of the Switzerland of Amsterdam because everyone wants a piece of him. His communication skills are very high with everyone, and he really cares about all the businesses.
What is your main advice for other operators looking to grow with an OTA?
Yes, but it goes hand-in-hand with focusing on what you can actually control. There are so many things that are out of your hands. You can't control the weather, and you can’t control if a customer is having a bad day or just doesn’t like the art at the Light Festival, for example. It’s easy to get a bad review for something that isn’t your fault.
What you can control is the quality of your boat, the story you tell, and the experience your host provides. That’s where you should invest your energy every single day. If you get those things right, the great reviews will follow.
If someone was new to GetYourGuide specifically, what advice would you give them to be successful?
You need to understand the product listing well. People have to understand what is happening in the activity. When I go on GetYourGuide now, I see a lot of new, really creative products, but if it's not super clear, people don't understand. People need to understand from the first photo and title.
Then, go into the descriptions and put all the selling points in there. Why is it good to do? Why is it local? Why is it special?
After that, be able to take last-minute bookings. Be able to run seven days a week. Be able to have a well-maintained team that greets people with a smile and doesn't do their seventh tour of the day looking down at the floor. At the end of the day, you need to keep it consistent.
What does success look like for you in two to three years?
Building on the success of our waffle-making workshop, we’ve now launched a traditional English scone-making workshop in London. We would like to expand to four new cities per year, so somewhere between 12 and 16 cities across Europe. We’re looking at a few cities in Spain and Italy now.
We want to make sure we can give tourists the most value in the shortest time. We want to continue building our fleet, develop more products, and have more people see the city in our unique way.
Is there a crazy customer story you'd like to share?
The nice thing about our industry, especially with boats, is that people often book them to celebrate something. We have so many wedding proposals, anniversaries, birthdays, and family get-togethers.
We had a 100th birthday for someone on the boat recently. The fact that we are a platform to create those unique memories is really everything. I think that's the biggest drive for us.
If you look at a story about someone booking with GetYourGuide, it's amazing to see on our software when someone books all of our products individually — the stroopwafel workshop, the tile painting, and the cheese cruise. They don’t even know it's the same company, because it says Starboard and We Are Amsterdam.
When we see that, we're like, "All right, this is a really good proof of concept." It means we have a strong presence and that our language speaks to the same people in the same way.
Key takeaways
- Innovate. Focus on creating interactive, fun, and high-quality experiences that offer a modern take on traditional tours, something today’s travelers want to experience.
- Leverage OTA partnerships for growth. Work closely with your account manager to identify opportunities and use the insights from the OTA platform to help scale your business.
- Use data to your advantage. Analyze the numbers to gain a deeper understanding of your customers, track performance, and make informed decisions to optimize your products and marketing strategies.
- Invest in your team. A well-trained and strongly motivated team consistently delivers a 5-star experience. Incentivize them to collect reviews and empower them to be the best. No one will ask for a review if they don’t think it will be a good one.
- Content is king. High-quality photos and well-crafted descriptions are crucial for conversion, and keeping them relevant is too. Continuously optimize your content based on results and what is currently going on in your city, like the weather or upcoming events.
