Blog: Inside GetYourGuide

To test the impact of marketing actions, Valentin created a synthetic A/B testing methodology without using visitors. He explains the methods he used to create and run them in a controlled environment. True to his team’s mission, the senior data analyst also shares how he created a self-service testing product that enabled the Marketing team to run these tests independently.

running-and-scaling-a-synthetic-ab-testing-platform-for-marketing

developer-tools; brand; engineering

In 2021, the Sales Winter Summit was more critical than ever, especially since last year's challenges continue into this one. The planning committee for the event was not deterred by travel restrictions nor social distancing. In fact, the restrictions challenged them to create and host an impactful and powerful adaptation of the event — virtually.

how-and-why-we-brought-our-global-summit-online

culture; diversity-inclusion

Theodore shares how he and backend engineer Jean Carlo Machado built a modern Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipeline to use in all our machine learning services. They used Jinja for the templating, pre-commit for the automatic checks, Drone CI for the continuous integration, and Databricks jobs for the training. The data scientist also explains how we manage our models using MLflow and how we can orchestrate the workflow using Apache Airflow.

laying-the-foundation-of-our-open-source-ml-platform-with-a-modern-ci-cd-pipeline

working-at-getyourguide; engineering

Our humble beginnings can be traced back to around three years ago. The group was born out of the employee desire to implement diversity at GetYourGuide. One of our core company values states “Champion diversity“ and we exist to help make this a reality. Back in those days, it was more of a consultancy group whereas we’ve now evolved into an active group — a decision that was made after the events of summer 2020 and the attention around the Black Lives Matter movement.

introducing-the-diversity-and-inclusion-group

diversity-inclusion; culture; working-at-getyourguide

If you’re looking to join GetYourGuide in a UX or Product capacity, there couldn’t be a more exciting time to do so. Of course, stepping into adynamic team with strong visions of the future requires a specific candidate type. But if you’re prepared to set your own foundations and be bold about making changes to the product, you’re in the right place. In this episode of Talented, we discuss these topics and much more.

s2e1-what-we-look-for-in-product-design-candidates

working-at-getyourguide; design

The goal of bringing all the leaders together for an engineering managers summit was to encourage cross-team learning, bring new perspectives, and tackle big questions. But honestly, it was also an event to fire up the managers and have some fun. It was a breath of fresh air to take a step back and look at topics beyond our day-to-day syncs and standups.

how-to-build-a-high-performance-engineering-team

culture; how-to

A dojo is a training room in Japanese martial arts, and a kata is a detailed, predetermined movement sequence to fight an imaginary opponent. The routine is repeated to perfection so the fighter can recall patterns by instincts in a real battle.

practicing-coding-dojo-to-level-up-knowledge-between-engineering-functions-getyourguide

data; product; working-at-getyourguide

GetYourGuide offers a marketplace with thousands of activities provided by partners around the world. When partners create their activities, they set prices in their local currency. To make customers feel at home while they browse, we display activity prices in the customers' preferred currency. Our platform currently supports 40 different currencies.

implementing-a-reliable-library-for-currency-conversion

engineering; working-at-getyourguide; product

Here is a brief overview of the revised Onboarding Days adjusted specifically for onboarding from home.

heres-how-were-onboarding-new-employees-during-covid-19

onboarding; working-at-getyourguide

The Customer Engagement team’s mission is to accelerate engagement across all stages of the customer lifecycle. To achieve this goal, one of their approaches is to leverage communication channels such as email and push notifications.

leveraging-an-event-driven-architecture-to-build-meaningful-customer-relationships

working-at-getyourguide

The DEN team focuses on ensuring our engineering teams can be as productive as they can through tooling to build services. Their work enables engineers to focus on building the GetYourGuide products themselves.

what-are-productivity-pairing-days

developer-tools; machine-learning

At GetYourGuide, we recently made a change in our main serialization framework from Apache Thrift to JSON. Dang shares his team’s experience in that journey, the pitfalls, and what the future holds for the team with the new serialization framework.

transitioning-from-apache-thrift-to-json-and-openapi

machine-learning; data

Maki tells us about her role, why she chose to work with us, and how she collaborates effectively with the global and regional teams.

a-tokyo-destination-manager-on-collaborating-effectively-with-her-global-team

working-at-getyourguide; destination-management

The senior UX writer and senior product designer duo share their process on UX Planet, a resource for everything user-experience related. In the full post, they share how they combine their powers to solve platform problems for customers who are getting ready for their trip and destination. Here are the highlights:

how-a-product-designer-and-ux-writer-create-synergy

user-experience; design; culture

Why did we migrate to Google's Firebase? As the company's systems and architectures evolved, we faced a problem. Our authentication systems, which lived inside a monolithic application, no longer fulfilled our needs. We needed a simple, future-proof authentication mechanism to allow our teams to build features and services in a new architecture.

modernizing-and-scaling-our-authentication-with-firebase

working-at-getyourguide; data

Milli knows that investing in leaders is an investment in the entire company's success – after all, managers are the messengers of our culture and values. She gives us an overview of how the TD team builds up education resources for the whole team and piloted a digital coaching program for high performing managers with Sharpist.

educating-training-coaching-our-talent-development-strategy

culture; working-at-getyourguide

We're trusted business partners who support investment decisions, business cases and provide clarity on financials through budgets and forecasts. It has been great to see how the rest of the organization embraces the team and recognize what we can bring to the table. Being a business partner means anyone can come to us if they want to get a project or innovation off the ground. We bring clarity on the financial implications to make sure investments are robust to help steer towards the right decision.

5-things-to-know-about-the-financial-planning-analysis-team

working-at-getyourguide; culture

Jennifer Azzarello shares how years of working in a global team has prepared her for unexpected, total remote work.

one-global-team-stays-together-while-apart-remote

culture; working-at-getyourguide

Data products have become an essential part of today's product landscape. The rise of the internet has shifted the focus from physical products to digital ones—the exponentially growing usage of internet enabled companies to build data products. According to Data Jujitsu author, DJ Patel, a data product is a product that facilitates an end goal through the use of data.

understanding-data-products-and-their-4-levels-of-ownership

engineering; product

To ensure that the deployed model is valid and versatile, we designed and applied a testing methodology. This results in closing the narrative and institutionalising our data-driven attribution model as the single source of truth within the company.

deploying-and-pressure-testing-a-markov-chains-model

data; developer-tools

Last year, I worked on a machine learning model that suggests whether our activities belong to a category like “family friendly” or “not family friendly”. Following our Data Science principles, I came up with a simple first version optimizing for its F1 score , the most-recommended quality measure for such a binary classification problem. You can see this for instance by looking at some of the top Google results for “F1 score” like “Accuracy, Precision, Recall or F1?” by Koo Ping Shun.

what-makes-a-good-f1-score

engineering; machine-learning

For live statistics of resource usage, we take advantage of the Datadog tool. Simultaneously, for deeper analysis of the heap allocations, we use the Jemalloc library paired with the jeprof standard Java profiler.

find-and-fix-oom-and-memory-leaks-in-java-services

developer-tools; working-at-getyourguide

The days of faith- or expertise-based budget allocations in marketing are long over. With the increased penetration of data and analytics into business strategies, marketing managers are faced with even more challenges: They now need to constantly prove the value of their actions.

understanding-data-driven-attribution-models

engineering; machine-learning

Since last year, we have been hosting panel talks aimed at developing more women into leaders at GetYourGuide. As the events are becoming more frequent, and as attendance grows, we've given the initiative a name, Incredible Women. These discussions have become a place for women leaders to share their experiences with other women who want to grow their careers. The discussion topics include building confidence, work-life balance, integrity, and bringing your whole self to work.

3-tough-lessons-for-women-in-leadership-from-a-director-in-the-middle-east

diversity-inclusion; culture

UX researchers at GetYourGuide are embedded into Product teams where we collaborate with UX designers, UX writers, product managers, and engineers.

3-skills-to-elevate-your-influence-as-a-ux-researcher

user-experience; how-to

The Travelers UX team is responsible for delivering an enjoyable and consistent traveler experience across all our platforms. The team works on a broad range of topics, including optimizing the Wishlist feature, where travelers can save experiences on our website and app for future booking or planning.

how-we-migrated-a-microservice-out-of-our-monolith-getyourguide

user-experience; data

Regarding the last point, we set up hand disinfectant stations in and outside of the office, reduced and distanced staff seating in the office, created a sign-in system for when people choose to work from the office, and introduced contact tracing measures.

how-one-team-facilitates-our-workplace-experience-getyourguide

culture; working-at-getyourguide

Customer insight is a deep and accurate understanding of a customer's need or problem. These pain points need to be looked at from different angles, through various data sources.

how-we-built-the-ultimate-customer-insights-team

culture; working-at-getyourguide

The process, of course, moves concurrently with efficient communication with stakeholders on whom we rely to clarify requirements. Eugene Klyuchnikov, senior data engineer, shares some tips to improve communication between BI and the different departments that work with them.

10-tips-on-effective-communication-in-business-intelligence

data; how-to

OKRs are a simple framework for defining and tracking your objectives and outcomes. At the end of the quarter, you can use them to evaluate how much you achieved toward your goals

designers-achieve-your-okrs-with-this-simple-workshop

design; how-to

He reveals how the Product and Design department has adapted their approach for social distancing and which product design tools they use.

our-ux-design-process-and-how-we-adapt-to-change

working-at-getyourguide; design

A central part of our role has always been to support suppliers. Before COVID, we were addressing their concerns in-person during in-market visits and being available as often as possible over the phone. With travel slowing down, there are a few things I've been focusing on with existing and newly onboarded suppliers at this time.

preparing-for-tourisms-new-normal-with-a-new-york-destination-manager

destination-management; working-at-getyourguide

So we want to state, unequivocally, that Black lives matter, and that we stand with the Black community as they demand justice and seek transformation in the United States and around the globe. GetYourGuide opposes and condemns all forms of racism, bigotry, and hate.

silence-is-not-an-option-we-stand-with-the-black-community

diversity-inclusion; culture

I joined the CRM team in the beginning of 2020. Funnily enough, that's also when we could start calling it a team.

crm-checklist-do-these-6-steps-before-preparing-your-strategy

how-to; crm

Johannes begins by explaining how we went from millions of customers to almost zero in a matter of three weeks.

our-response-to-the-impact-of-covid-19-as-explained-by-johannes-reck

working-at-getyourguide; news

Before moving to Berlin four years ago, I lived in Paris for nearly 13 years. I originally studied town planning and worked in the field for five years.

a-career-evolution-in-customer-service-from-rep-to-ops-analyst

culture; personal-growth

The project manager from Portugal tells us the story behind our new travel supplier support blog, GetYourGuide for Suppliers.

how-this-project-manager-got-all-hands-on-deck-to-kick-off-a-new-supplier-support-blog

culture; personal-growth

Working with travel suppliers of our best-selling tours, the team brought some of our experiences online. Viewers can learn to make ravioli or paint a Balinese watercolor. Travel publications such as The Guardian, Condé Nast, and Travel and Leisure have featured the initiative in their stories.

the-brand-initiative-that-brought-travel-experiences-home

working-at-getyourguide; brand

Many things have changed significantly. We shifted from a sales mindset to a pure support attitude.

how-to-scale-a-new-market-from-scratch-while-supporting-travel-suppliers

working-at-getyourguide; destination-management

Whether customers are traveling or not, our priority is to keep them safe.

a-destination-manager-on-preparing-suppliers-for-the-return-of-travel

working-at-getyourguide; destination-management

While we've already shared our playbook in its entirety, we wanted to highlight its most effective remote work strategies for staying productive. As a bonus, we've also provided tips on writing emergency remote work guidelines.

suddenly-working-remote-10-ways-weve-adjusted-to-staying-productive-at-home

culture; relocation

We’ve already shared our internal WFH office playbook that was written especially for this situation, and now we’d like to share a few practices and tips from the working parents on our team.

heres-how-our-working-parents-stay-focused-while-social-distancing

working-at-getyourguide; culture; relocation

The webinar dug into how online distribution would look like in a post-pandemic world, and what this means for operators of tours, activities, and attractions around the world.

covid-19-q-a-with-tao-tao-theres-no-operational-playbook-do-whats-right

culture; news

Before diving into our customer-obsessed approach, it’s important to understand that we work in mission teams, also known as cross-functional teams.

3-mindset-shifts-to-customer-obsessed-engineering-in-inventory

how-to

This crisis, of course, is no regular remote work occurrence. To truly flatten the curve, Kathrin Hartrampf, one of our German language specialists, has curated advice for work from home situations where public activity is limited or not accessible.

work-from-home-tips-during-covid-19

culture; relocation; how-to

We live in a world where businesses have to live up to a certain expectation of revenue goals, and it’s actually relatively easy to generate short term revenue when you know your customer base.

why-you-should-play-the-long-game-in-crm-and-how-we-win-over-customers

crm; working-at-getyourguide

As our Data Products organization grew in 2019, we felt we had reached a critical mass to better define who we wanted to be and how we wanted to work in 2020 and beyond.

15-data-science-principles-we-live-by

working-at-getyourguide; machine-learning

I’m Tobias, a principal engineer at GetYourGuide. Currently, I drive the architecture of our marketplace.

how-to-split-a-monolith-into-services

how-to; data

I made a mental note of the state of mind of a new employee in their first moments, curious to see for myself how we would go about curing the chaos for bewildered new joiners like me and set us up for success.

what-to-expect-during-onboarding-days

onboarding; culture

Originally from the best city in the land down under, Sydney, I joined GetYourGuide in the Sydney office as the first hire in Australia. Initially, I managed roughly half the country: South Australia, Western Australia, Northern Territory, Tasmania, and half of New Zealand's North Island.

expectations-vs-reality-an-inspiring-story-of-relocating-to-new-york-city-from-sydney

destination-management; relocation

My job is to make sure travelers are happy with our product when they visit Japan.

heres-what-its-like-working-in-our-tokyo-office

culture; destination-management

As software engineers, we're continually learning throughout our careers.

how-we-work-efficiently-with-legacy-code

developer-tools; working-at-getyourguide

Constructed in 1926, the building reflects the hundred-year evolution of Berlin and we’re excited about using this space to continue shaping the city’s present and future.

techcrunch-tours-our-berlin-hq-office

news; events

I spent the last few years working as a technical recruiter for Intercom and Segment, two successful software companies in San Francisco.

why-this-technical-recruiter-made-the-move-from-san-francisco-to-berlin

relocation; engineering

Making effective decisions is an integral part of the job for product managers and team leads. This can be a challenge in cross-functional teams where neither product manager (PM) nor team lead have positional authority — and the other people on the team report to neither the PM nor to the team leader. To relieve this common bottleneck, Ameet Ranadive, Chief Product Officer, takes us through his framework to answer the question, “What's the best way to help our team get to the decision?”

when-to-ask-and-when-to-tell-our-chief-of-product-reveals-his-decision-making-framework

working-at-getyourguide; how-to

The customer is the core of our business, and if customer service is failing, then we literally don't have a business. Tao, our COO, put it best by asking, "Why do we have customer service? To build customer loyalty."

how-we-raised-customer-service-hiring-standards-while-scaling-up

working-at-getyourguide

As we discuss this layer, we also highlight how a design that focuses on optimizing transformation execution order helped us dramatically decrease overall processing times, improve recovery times, and enhance the reliability of our systems through improved testability. But before turning our attention to the solution, let’s take a closer look at the problems that we were trying to address.

how-we-built-our-new-modern-etl-pipeline-part-2

engineering; machine-learning

The Marketing-Tech team recently decided to take a different approach when it came to managing Google Ads and moved away from attempting to mirror everything bi-directionally.

when-scaling-google-ads-say-no-to-state

data; working-at-getyourguide

Ingrid begins the interview by saying tours were for uncool and boring people back in her day and says GetYourGuide has transformed tours to be trendy and millennial, “How did you do it?” she asks.

johannes-reck-on-changing-the-travel-game-at-techcrunch-disrupt

news; brand

In May 2019, we announced our $484 million in Series E funding led by the SoftBank Vision Fund, with co-investors Temasek, Lakestar, and Heartcore Capital.

10-highlights-at-getyourguide-from-2019

events; working-at-getyourguide

Identifying what it is you want to accomplish as a team or organization requires intimately knowing the problem you’re trying to solve and why it’s important to solve it.

product-management-best-practices-look-at-the-big-picture

how-to; working-at-getyourguide

Hack’n’lead champions diverse representation in tech by providing gender-inclusive hackathons and events, with an 80% participation rate from women.

supporting-women-in-tech-at-hacknlead

diversity-inclusion; engineering; data

Tobias Rein, co-founder and principal engineer, sat down in our Zürich office with Urs Gredig of CNN Money Switzerland, for their Executive Talk series.

looking-back-the-getyourguide-journey-on-cnn-money

news; working-at-getyourguide

At GetYourGuide, we have many moving parts that keep the platform running smoothly.

the-art-of-scaling-booking-reference-numbers-at-getyourguide

working-at-getyourguide; data

A mission team is a small group consisting of members from different departments such as designers, engineers, UX copywriters, and product managers.

how-we-integrate-design-into-mission-teams

culture; working-at-getyourguide

I’m originally from Indonesia and relocated to Thailand three years ago when we opened our Bangkok office.

how-this-judge-chose-our-getyourguide-awards-winners

events; news

HR Services live and breathe our core company values — and with good reason — every single employee passes through HR during their career journey here.

whats-it-like-to-work-in-hr-at-getyourguide

working-at-getyourguide; recruiting-101

The GetYourGuide Awards celebrate the most incredible travel experiences for our customers. We’ve evaluated tens of thousands of products from our global network of tours and activities, looking for the best of the best.

how-this-pr-manager-pulled-off-a-global-search-for-the-worlds-best-travel-experiences

brand; events

Our big brand revamps in 2018 was the culmination of our in-depth journey to uncover the emotions that underpin our product, both positive and negative, and distill what we found into an identity that resonates with travelers.

position-spotlight-phocuswire-interviews-our-cmo

culture; brand

In early 2019 when we talked about launching the sourcing function at GetYourGuide, there were only a few companies in Berlin that had in-house sourcers. Since then, the situation has changed and there are more companies going through extensive growth and building in-house sourcing teams.

the-highly-strategic-role-of-a-sourcer-explained

recruiting-101; working-at-getyourguide

Building up an engineering brand is key to recruiting top tech talent. If you show the world you work with an outstanding development team that’s tackling interesting problems, your company will stand out amongst competitors.

talented-episode-7-how-to-build-and-scale-your-tech-team-with-engineer-branding

brand; working-at-getyourguide

The panel focused on the future of the experiences sector and the rumors regarding the future of GetYourGuide and Klook, both of which are backed by Softbank.

johannes-reck-clears-the-air-at-phocuswright-conference

news

Most software engineers love building systems from scratch or working in greenfields products using state of the art technology or framework.

tackling-business-complexity-with-strategic-domain-driven-design

developer-tools; design

People need to have a growth mindset when they work at a startup.

9-leadership-quotes-for-companies-in-hypergrowth-mode

culture; how-to

Les Roches considers itself to be one of the world’s leading hospitality schools and two of their graduates, Abhinav and Vincent, work in our Sales team in Bangkok. Their roles focus on expanding our inventory of incredible things to do in India and Southeast Asia.

how-les-roches-graduates-are-driving-growth-in-southeast-asia

destination-management; working-at-getyourguide

I'm Brazilian-Korean, and I moved to Berlin from São Paulo around four and a half years ago.

how-a-display-marketer-and-his-small-team-make-a-big-impact

brand; working-at-getyourguide

Backend has more to do with our application and DevOps is how everything glues together.

whats-it-like-moving-from-backend-engineering-to-devops

personal-growth; working-at-getyourguide

I’m Emma, a brand copywriter working in the Creative Studio team.

how-a-copywriter-uses-words-and-creativity-to-bring-our-brand-to-life

brand; culture; working-at-getyourguide

This positive first impression can make all the difference whether or not someone accepts an offer, applies again in the future, or recommends the company to a friend.

talented-episode-6-what-makes-a-top-notch-candidate-experience

working-at-getyourguide; recruiting-101

The Localization team does more than just translations, we make GetYourGuide feel like it's written in your neighborhood.

career-or-baby-first-a-localization-lead-answers-the-age-old-question

culture

On the product development side, our major contribution is providing tools and analysis around A/B testing, commonly referred to as split testing.

how-we-scaled-up-a-b-testing-at-getyourguide

a-b-testing

First, we discuss how Mark partners with recruiters to develop a long-term Employer Branding strategy that helps build strong pipelines.

talented-episode-5-creating-an-appealing-employer-brand

brand; culture

In this relocation guide, we’re focusing on parents taking on a new role in a new city.

relocation-guide-relocating-with-your-family

relocation; culture

Destination Managers on our Sales team discover the most incredible sights, museums, and activities around the world.

meet-destination-managers-from-our-global-sales-team

destination-management; culture

We’re excited to partner with Women Techmakers Switzerland for our upcoming Product and Design meetup, “Always Working for the Customer.

zurich-meetup-product-and-design-with-women-techmakers-switzerland

working-at-getyourguide; engineering

I’m from upstate New York and I joined GetYourGuide in November 2018 as part of the Supply Excellence team in the Content and Supply Operations department.

position-spotlight-supply-project-manager

culture; working-at-getyourguide

I was born in South Korea then adopted by a Dutch family, and I grew up in the Netherlands.

the-art-of-leading-teams-program-developing-our-leaders

culture; personal-growth

We have several Associate programs at GetYourGuide (check out Raoni’s post on being an Associate Team Leader in our Customer Service department)

associate-engineering-manager-program-a-leadership-growth-path

working-at-getyourguide; personal-growth

Here, the term engineer refers to all members of our engineering teams including data analysts and data scientists.

our-career-path-for-engineers

working-at-getyourguide; culture

The Recruitment Coordination team is led by Anna Vecher, Recruiting Coordinator turned Talent Acquisition Operations Team Lead, and is made up of 6 full-time Coordinators. In today’s post, she provides us with an overview of the role and its importance within GetYourGuide’s hiring structure.

meet-the-team-recruitment-coordinators

culture; recruiting-101

Check out the sixth and final component of the Engineering Manager framework at GetYourGuide: systems health. Discover how Engineering Managers manage their cloud-based infrastructure to maintain healthy systems and increase the speed of execution through ownership, metrics tracking, incident management, and building a DevOps culture.

engineering-manager-series-part-6-systems-health-and-how-to-create-a-devops-culture

engineering; culture

First, they share how they maintain a high bar when finding prospects before discussing relationship-building with passive prospects, mindful messaging, and, finally, the best ways to partner with hiring managers and recruiters.

talented-episode-3-sourcing-to-raise-the-bar

working-at-getyourguide

When writing for user experience (UX), one of the most important things to consider is how your copy — be it a single word or multiple sentences — will be localized into other languages.

5-ux-writing-tips-for-localization

user-experience; how-to

I’m a Backend Engineer located in the Zurich office.

meet-the-team-partner-tech

working-at-getyourguide; culture

Rico Lehmann, Customer Service Team Lead turned BPO Coordinator, found his calling working in Customer Service as a Team Lead. However, a few years into the role, he felt pulled in a very different direction. In today’s post, find out why he changed roles and what he learned along the way. Discovering my skill set in Customer Service I’ve been working in Customer Service for over a decade. Initially what appealed to me about working in Customer Service wasn’t the field itself, but rather the companies I had the opportunity to join.

owning-your-development-from-customer-service-team-lead-to-bpo-coordinator

culture; personal-growth

Moderated by Mark Ivan Serunjogi, Employer Brand Specialist, our panel of experts will tackle these issues and provide insights on their best practices for corporate allyship

beyond-parades-and-rainbow-logos-pride-panel

diversity-inclusion; events

The evening will feature a presentation from our own Otavio Cordeiro, Senior iOS Engineer. Otavio will walk us through his experience with code reviews, how to make it easier for submitters and reviewers, and how code reviews helped him contribute several new rules to SwiftLint.

were-hosting-cocoaheads-july-the-ios-and-os-x-development-meetup

events; developer-tools

Once we started interviewing for this role, we began to notice something odd.

engineering-manager-series-part-5-customer-and-business-impact

culture; data

GetYourGuide will never stop turning trips into amazing experiences, but after the rebranding last summer, we did change our slogan.

creating-a-memorable-slogan-no-matter-the-language

culture; brand

At GetYourGuide, we have a pretty flexible work-day framework built on trust.

on-working-remotely-a-data-scientists-tips-for-staying-effective

how-to; relocation; working-at-getyourguide