The differences between booking sites and gift voucher sellers

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Many of Manawa's partners work with different types of online retailers. In this article, we will list all the differences between marketplace-based booking websites such as Manawa, and gift voucher sellers such as Sport Découverte, Jochen Schweizer and Smartbox.

Manawa promotes a large number of professional outdoor and adventure activity partners around the world. Many of them are discovering the benefits of online sales by promoting their activities solely on Manawa, but the majority also use other acquisition channels to promote their activities on the internet. The two main channels for acquiring additional customers on the internet are booking sites such as Manawa and gift voucher sellers such as Sport Découverte in France or Jochen Schweizer in Germany.

For booking sites, we invite you to read the article on which is the best booking site for outdoor activities and here we will focus on the differences between booking sites and gift voucher sellers.

By the way, it's Manawa who writes this comparison, it's based on feedback from many outdoor professionals, partners or not, feedback from several booking software, as well as our own experience in the sector since 2015. Chances are you'll find that booking sites are more suitable than gift voucher sellers for promoting your outdoor and adventure activities around the world 😉.

It's worth pointing out that most booking sites also offer gift vouchers, mainly in response to customer demand. In 2023, at Manawa, gift vouchers and cards accounted for 4% of our bookings, 80% of which were made during the festive season.

Booking sites and gift voucher sellers?

Here, we're not going to list why you should sell your outdoor and adventure activities on booking sites but focus on the differences between booking sites and gift voucher sellers, remaining as objective as possible. We at Manawa are always very happy to have exclusivity with many of our partners but remain against the principle of exclusivity. Our primary objective is always to enable as many customers as possible to discover outdoor and adventure activities.

Definitions generated by ChatGPT

In order to avoid any bias, and before starting our comparison of outdoor and adventure activities, we adopted a playful approach by asking ChatGPT. We asked him to write us two generic definitions of booking sites and gift voucher sellers.

Definition of a booking site

A booking site is a website that allows users to book a variety of services or products online, such as hotel rooms, flights, car hire, tickets for events, restaurant tables and leisure activities. These sites offer a user-friendly interface to check availability, compare options, select and pay online to facilitate the booking process.

Definition of a gift voucher seller

A gift voucher seller is a company or website that offers gift vouchers or gift cards for sale that can be exchanged for specific products or services. Gift vouchers offer recipients the flexibility to choose for themselves what they wish to acquire or experience from a wide range of options, such as restaurants, hotel stays, leisure activities, wellness treatments and so on. Customers can purchase these vouchers online or in-store, and beneficiaries can redeem them according to their preferences in transactions with the service providers concerned.

Manawa's 10 advantages over gift voucher sellers

1. Brand communication

Booking sites like Manawa are still based on the marketplace model, so we communicate transparently about the brand on each of our activities, as well as in our dealings with customer service.

Gift voucher sellers, on the other hand, do not communicate about brands.

The Manawa advantage: All our partners have a dedicated page featuring their activities, logos and a description of the company. Some examples: Les Heures Saines - Aventures Plein Air - Outdoor - Tromso Wilderness Center - Skydive Seven

2. International visibility

Gift voucher sellers generally focus on a single market. This is because the laws governing the sale of gift vouchers vary from country to country. It is therefore rare for them to sell gift vouchers in several countries and therefore in several languages.

Conversely, Manawa offers several languages on the website, as do the customer service teams, to reach as many people as possible who are looking for an outdoor experience. The site is currently in English, French, German and Spanish, and we're adding a 5th language in 2025!

The Manawa advantage: In 2023, we enabled over 100 different nationalities to book outdoor and adventure activities!

3. To discover or to offer?

One of the main distinctions is that a customer booking on a booking site is generally buying an activity for themselves, whereas a customer booking a gift voucher is buying it as a present for someone else.

Manawa customers therefore intend to carry out the activity they have purchased. On the other hand, when a customer buys a gift voucher, it is possible that the recipient of the gift is not as interested (or not at all interested) in the activity they will receive as a gift, or that they have not yet planned to visit the region where the activity is taking place.

The Manawa advantage: The pages are highly detailed to ensure that customers book the activity that suits them best, ensuring an optimal experience and avoiding casting errors.

4. Different consumption patterns

The consumption patterns of Manawa customers differ from those of gift voucher sellers in many respects.

Search methods: For gift voucher sellers, the customer searches using keywords such as gift giving, gifts, birthday ideas, etc., whereas for booking sites it's more a case of what to do at, best activities, etc.

Booking lead times: Gift voucher sellers mainly book in advance, often for specific events (birthdays, Christmas, etc.). For booking sites, it's more last-minute, and can be a few weeks in advance for customers who are organising their trips, or a few days, or even a few hours, for customers who want to discover your activities during their holidays. The average booking time for Manawa in 2023 is 10 days in advance and is still falling - 15% of the time less than 4 days in advance, 35% 5 to 10 days in advance, 30% 10 to 30 days in advance and 20% more than a month in advance.

The Manawa advantage: Most of our customers are sporty, often beginners in the activity they book. The typical Manawa customer goes running once a week and books a canyoning trip for the first time on holiday.

5. Method of remuneration

The way Manawa works is very simple: we need customers to carry out the activity on your premises and to pay you in order to be able to earn money, on a commission basis. If customers don't do the activity, we earn nothing, so it's a win-win model.

For gift voucher sellers, on the other hand, the remuneration model is based both on bookings made (as for booking sites) and on a significant proportion of gift vouchers never used by customers. In this scenario, they receive 100% of the remuneration.

The Manawa advantage: We have no hidden costs. We only pay a commission as a business introducer, and weather cancellations are free for professionals.

6. Flexibility and time savings

Gift voucher sellers often have a unique way of working: in most cases, activity professionals have to collect the voucher (or the voucher number) and then enter it manually into their partner space in order to be paid. Manawa's system is completely automated, so activity professionals don't have to do anything for payment or invoicing.

The Manawa advantage: We adapt to the way our partners work using four different ways of managing bookings: Automatic, Semi-automatic, Manual and Instantaneous.

7. Connection to reservation software via API

Today, Manawa is doing its utmost to connect via API to the various booking software packages used by professionals in the business in order to improve the customer experience with automatic confirmation. This is also very important for saving time for our partners and for Manawa's customer service. Today, gift voucher sellers are not connected to any booking software.

Manawa's plus point: We are connected to 10 reservation software packages in 2023 and plan to add new ones based on the needs and expectations of our partners.

8. How do we find our customers?

When it comes to customer acquisition channels, booking sites like Manawa and gift voucher sellers share a number of similar methods. Our three main methods are the same:

  • Our paid advertising campaigns (such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads...),
  • Our natural referencing via our activity pages or our articles,
  • Our brands.

Manawa also offers - in addition to the first three in several languages - two other ways to promote your outdoor activities:

  • Affiliation, which allows you to sell your activities through travel blogs.
  • Multi-booking, which allows us to offer a surfing activity in Hendaye, for example, after a customer has booked rafting in Itxassou for a holiday in the Basque Country.

The Manawa advantage: We are transparent about our acquisition channels and able to adapt them to our partners' needs and challenges.

9. Support and training

Manawa's aim is to introduce new customers to outdoor and adventure activities, and to enable professionals to discover new practice sites. To do this, we need to ensure that our partners can develop their activities and share advice and training to help them develop their activities. Here are a few examples:

Manawa's plus point: We're the only ones doing it today ;)

10. Availability and responsiveness

Our partners have often commented on how easy it is to get in touch with us, unlike gift voucher sellers. In fact, we are available 7 days a week by email and telephone for customers and partners. We do our utmost to respond as quickly as possible to all requests. To this day, we have always made it a point of honour to respond to all customer service requests within 24 hours, and we can always be reached for our partners.

The Manawa advantage: As a partner, you have an account manager dedicated to your region, who works to improve the partnership on a regular basis.

If you are already a partner, please write directly to your regional manager. If you are not yet a partner and would like to find out more about Manawa, you can also request a contact: Become a partner.