Starting October 1, 2026, GetYourGuide will charge tour operators a commission surcharge to recover the digital services taxes it pays in France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom — ending a practice of absorbing the levies that began in January 2025.

The company confirmed the change, which had not been previously reported. Suppliers in the five markets received two months' notice.

What does the surcharge cost suppliers?

The surcharge varies by market and stacks on top of existing commissions rather than replacing them.

• One UK operator was quoted an additional 1.8% on top of an existing 25% commission.
• The underlying DST runs as high as 7% in Turkey.
• GetYourGuide began listing the tax as a separate line item on supplier invoices in April 2026, before starting to collect it.

For a small operator already paying a quarter of revenue in commission, the extra percentage points arrive on top of an already heavy distribution cost. Several suppliers expect to pass the cost to consumers through higher prices.

Why is GetYourGuide passing the cost on?

Digital services taxes are national levies on the revenue of large online marketplaces, search engines, and social media companies once they cross specific revenue thresholds. In the UK, for example, a company's digital activities must generate more than £500 million globally.

The taxes were designed to capture Big Tech revenue. In practice, GetYourGuide is following the same cost-shifting playbook already used by Meta and Google, both of which pushed their DST liabilities onto advertisers and business customers rather than absorbing them.

GetYourGuide says it opposes how DSTs are structured. The company argues the levies tax revenue rather than profit, hitting growth-stage European companies hardest — along with the small businesses that depend on their platforms — and is lobbying policymakers for alternatives.

How will operators respond?

Operators such as Wales Outdoors expect to raise consumer prices in response, and warn that fees of this kind accumulate and rarely disappear once introduced.

That points to a straightforward chain of consequences for sellers of travel: the tax lands on the platform, the platform shifts it to the supplier, and the supplier passes it to the traveler. Whether higher consumer prices dent booking volumes for small operators in the affected markets will become visible after the surcharge takes effect on October 1 — and whether competitors follow with similar charges will shape the cost of experiences distribution across the five markets more broadly.