How to skip museum lines and find things to do in a new city

I’ve been in New York City this week, and the weather was cold and rainy on Monday and Tuesday (yes, that’s unusual for May). So what do you do when that happens? Go to a museum!

When our Uber drove by the front of the American Museum of Natural History, the line was ridiculously long. Like a few hundred yards long. There was no way we were waiting out in the cold rain with our two-year-old to get in, so I immediately got on my phone to buy tickets on GetYourGuide, which lets you skip lines and find interesting tours at museums and attractions around the world. (We ultimately didn’t need to buy tickets in advance because our driver just happened to drop us off at a side entrance with a much smaller line.)

There are numerous websites/apps where you can book travel activities (like ToursByLocals), but GetYourGuide is one of the better ones. It offers more than 31,000 things to do in 7,300+ destinations across the globe, from “Skip-the-Line” tickets at top museums in a city to guided tours of National Parks. Here are a few of the reasons to use and benefits of using GetYourGuide to discover and book tours and activities:

  • GetYourGuide is an efficient way to discover all the travel activities a destination has to offer. View all options, filter by type (attraction, culinary, tours, etc.). It’s easier than jumping around from article to article or guidebook to guidebook.
  • GetYourGuide vets each and every tour provider and only chooses the best products to sell on the platform. Then, GetYourGuide destination managers monitor customer reviews to assure the experience meets or exceeds expectations every time. It also performs secret shopping exercises. Underperformers are deleted from the platform, and the most popular, highest-rated tours are promoted higher in the search results.
  • GetYourGuide offers reviews from travelers who have actually booked the experience. Unlike some platforms, GetYourGuide restricts tour reviews to customers who have booked the tour or attraction. That way, it’s much more difficult for suppliers to buy or beg their way to a five-star review.
  • You can compare the prices of similar experiences. There are often many different tour options for a popular product. Take a trip to Paris for example. There are more than a 40+ tours of the Louvre ranging in price from $20-$400+: private tours, small group tours, big group tours, just a timed ticket, tours for kids, tours at night, tours that are paired with other iconic Parisian attractions, and more. GetYourGuide makes it easy to compare the benefits of each tour and make your own cost analysis.
  • GetYourGuide’s technology allows attractions to offer timed ticket entries so travelers can skip the long ticket lines and enter the fast pass lane.
  • Many GetYourGuide tours include transportation from any hotel, which is helpful if you don’t have a car and the attraction is outside of the city center.

Here are a few popular tours for families in three of my favorite cities:

Have you used GetYourGuide? What do you think of it? What other sites/apps do you use to book tours/attractions?

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