Review of Peek.com, Online platform to book Activities & Attractions at Travel Destinations

5 min readSep 30, 2019

What is Peek.com

Booking a flight or a hotel stay online is easy enough with online travel agent (OTA) websites like Makemytrip, ClearTrip, Munk, Kayak, Expedia, and more. We have OTA aggregator websites like trivago.com which help in getting a best travel offer.

But when it comes to finding & booking all those activities you want to experiences while vacationing, it’s a more lengthy and messy process of digging through travel recommendation sites like Tripadvisor.com, asking friends for advice, reading travel magazines, and finally searching for service provider sites (if they have one) to place your activity in the travel itinerary.

Travellers visit Peek.com because of easy booking experience during on vacation or at home. Traveller can find everything from taking a helicopter tour over the Grand Canyon or swimming with pigs in the Bahamas.

Peek.com has a huge selection of experiences in America with an inventory of 20,000+ local experiences and 800,000+ verified user reviews. Activity providers are happy with Peek.com as it automates back-end and customer-facing application, helping them to focus on creating memorable experiences.

Peek.com is expanding its product offering with a new update called Peek Pro 6. It has 50+ new features to help travel operators scale their businesses faster, and major POS (point of sale system) upgrades to make the guest experience seamless and intuitive. Peek Pro is designed to improve travel operators’ abilities to drive more bookings with improvised customer experience.

How Peek.com works

When users log in to Peek.com, they can choose a destination and browse through hundreds of experiences. The site is image-heavy and offers a simple, grid-based user interface. For each destination there’s a list of Top Ten Picks with links to Peek’s must-do activities, ranging from free visits to parks to paid tours.

Users can also view activities based on category. Peek team does quality check of each activity provider and destination listed on the site. Every attraction or activity has its own page with photos and description. Peek.com allows users book paid services directly within the site — no need to click and open another website to purchase tickets of an activity or call a third party number to make a reservation.

The site highlights both major and small activity providers, and perhaps is most useful for travellers and companies as it offers experiences that can’t be found elsewhere on the web. It is a very user-friendly way for the activity businesses at destinations (which is an unorganised business segment) to reach travellers and vice a versa.

Booking a paid activity is as simple as specifying the number of tickets and entering payment card information. Activity costs range from free to $30,000. All of the activities booked through Peek are displayed in the user’s account for quick reference, and there’s also a wish-list function for later booking. An added bonus: Peek has a best-price guarantee, so users won’t need to go hunting for deals. The company has also teamed up with local celebrities and experts to write “Perfect Day” posts that highlight that person’s favourite places and activities.

Peek Business Model

As a marketplace Peek.com helps travellers book the best experiences while also empowers tour operators to automate their businesses and grow revenues. Over 8 million activities lasting over 1.4 billion hours have been booked on Peek.com till June 2019.

While the company has started with a small number of destinations, the market Peek.com entering is huge in size. For example, Annual travel spending in the America on recreational activities alone is $85.4 billion, according to a June 2012 report from the USA Travel Association. Food and retail-related travel spending is more than $270 billion (The numbers include domestic & foreign travellers).

Who is investing in Peek.com

Peek makes money by taking a commission between 15 and 30 percent on each transaction made through the service. Already, the Peek team has caught some heavyweight investor’s attention, drawing $1.4 million in funding from SV Angel, Khosla Ventures, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and Jack Dorsey. Peek has also raised $40 million to date from key investors such as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey, Kayak founder Paul English, Trulia, and NFX founder Pete Flint and former Yelp COO Geoff Donaker.

With the some of the biggest players in tech and travel backing it up, Peek transforming into a unicorn is nearly on the horizon.

What are pros and cons of Peek.com so far

Pros

Peek.com is a perfect site bridging the gap between booking a stay and booking experiences at destination
Peek.com is built with latest web technologies, making it platform agnostic, has best in class UI (USer Interface), UX (User Experience) and CX (Customer Experience)
Peek.com is a perfect example of Web 3.0 mash-up. Excellent use of user generated content on web.
As usual 80% of best business concepts are built in the USA and rest of the world use the products, Like AirBnB, This business model too has tremendous potential to be popular among global travellers.

Cons

The site is not yet popular in India. The initial partnerships and booking availability are for limited places.
Booking of a resort/hotel does not appear upfront. This may be due to UX decision of promoting the Activities and Experiences first as it is core of the business Peek.com has.

Business opportunity for companies in Hospitality segment

Hotels can partner with Peek to sell destination specific packages (stay + activities) to domestic/international travellers.
It has a feature for corporate bookings but limited for few countries.
A similar app on social media to generate hot leads (people willing to travel specifically for activities and experiences)
Hotels can add a feature like this on website so customers can plan/book activities in advance

Special note about the founder of Peek.com

Peek founder and CEO, Ruzwana Bashir, has been named to Forbes 30 Under 30, Vanity Fair New Establishment, Marie Claire New Guard, Inc 30 under 30, and the list goes on. Except Bashir is focused on becoming the next unicorn CEO. The Oxford and Harvard Business School graduate-turned-tech CEO to hear intends to turn Peek.com into the next unicorn of the $150 billion global travel sector.