Google Things to Do: How the Surface Works for Operators

A visitor standing outside your city museum pulls out a phone and searches “tickets” with your museum’s name. Before your own website loads, Google shows a panel: a photo, a price, a star rating, and a Book button that sends them straight to a checkout. The price they see is €19. You changed it to €21 three weeks ago.

That panel is Google Things to do — Google’s experiences surface for tours, activities, and attraction tickets. It is not a marketplace you sign up for like Viator, and it is not something you rank into with a blog post. It is a data feed that Google reads from your booking system and prints inside Search and Maps. When it is set up right, it captures the walk-up buyer at the exact second they decide. When it is wrong or stale, it broadcasts a bad price to everyone who searches your name.

This guide is about that one surface only — where it appears, how the free listings differ from the paid ads, how you actually get on it, what Google shows and where the numbers come from, and how to check what your own listing says right now.

1. Where it shows up — Search, Maps, and inside attraction and points-of-interest panels, for both “things to do in [city]” and branded ticket searches.
2. Free vs paid — free booking links surface your inventory at no cost; Things to do ads are a separate paid format you bid into.
3. How you connect — through a booking system or connectivity partner, not by applying to Google directly.
4. What Google displays — price, availability, ratings, photos, and your name, all pulled from a product feed you control.
5. Whether it is accurate — the price and availability travelers see are only as current as your feed, which is why operators check it the way they check OTA rank.

Where the surface actually appears

Google Things to do is not a single page. It is a set of placements that surface bookable experiences inside results travelers already see. Google describes them appearing on the Search results page and on Google Maps, triggered by queries about points of interest — attractions, landmarks, parks, museums — and by experience searches like “things to do in [city].”

For an attraction ticket seller, three placements matter most. The first is the branded search: someone types your museum’s name and gets a knowledge panel with a ticket module attached. The second is the discovery search: “things to do in Lisbon” or “museums near me,” where your product competes in a carousel against everything else in the destination. The third is the Maps result: the traveler taps your pin and finds a booking option inside the place card. In each case the traveler never leaves Google until they click through to buy.

Free booking links vs Things to do ads

There are two ways your inventory shows up, and they are genuinely different products. Google is explicit that partners can surface inventory “via free listings and through a dynamic ad format,” and encourages operators to list for free or advertise.

Free booking links cost nothing. Once you are connected, your attraction tickets, tours, and activities can appear in Things to do Search results with a link straight to your checkout. You do not pay when a traveler clicks. This is the baseline every eligible operator should have on.

Things to do ads are a paid, dynamic format run through Google Ads. You do not write copy or pick keywords; Google builds the ad from your product feed and you only pay when someone clicks. They now run inside Travel campaigns, where the only bidding strategy is Maximize Conversion Value with a target return on ad spend, and Google ranks ads in an auction weighing your bid against ad quality — how well the listing matches the traveler’s need and how complete it is. The paid format buys you more prominent placement above the free results; it does not replace them.

How you actually get on it

You do not fill out a Google application form and wait. Eligibility is a connection, not an approval. Google’s own guidance is blunt: if you are an individual attraction, tour operator, or a reservation system representing fewer than 100 operators, they strongly recommend working with a connectivity partner rather than integrating directly. Direct integration means building to Google’s feed spec, signing a content license, and getting a technical account manager — a project most single operators have no reason to take on.

In practice, then, the question is: does the booking system you already use push to Google Things to do? Google publishes a public list of approved connectivity partners, and it is long. It includes booking-system vendors an attraction is likely to already run on — among them Bokun, FareHarbor, Rezdy, TrekkSoft, Ventrata, Xola, Regiondo, ROLLER, and Palisis — alongside resellers and OTAs like GetYourGuide, Viator, Tiqets, Headout, and Klook. If your reservation system is on that list, connecting is usually a matter of enabling the channel and mapping your products, not a new integration.

1. Confirm your booking system is an approved connectivity partner — or ask your vendor directly if you do not see them listed.
2. Enable the Google Things to do channel and select which products to expose.
3. Map each product’s title, photos, price, and live availability, because Google prints them verbatim.
4. Decide separately whether to also run Things to do ads through a connected Google Ads account.

What Google displays — and where the numbers come from

The listing a traveler sees is assembled from your feed, not typed by Google. Google states these placements give travelers “photos, prices, your company’s name, and the booking link for the activity,” plus ratings. Every one of those fields flows from the product data you send through your connectivity partner.

This is the part operators underestimate. If your city museum’s adult ticket is €21 in your booking system but the feed still carries a legacy €19 product, Google shows €19 to every searcher — and honors it at checkout, because the click lands on that product. Availability works the same way: a listing that shows open slots for today only shows them because your calendar says so. Sold out but still showing green, or open but showing sold out, both come from the feed being out of sync. Ratings are aggregated from review signals Google trusts, which is why steady, recent reviews on the surfaces Google reads feed directly into how your module looks.

The museum example, end to end

Say a city history museum sells three products: a timed adult ticket, a family pass, and a guided evening tour. Connected properly, all three can appear in Things to do — the adult ticket on branded searches, the evening tour surfacing on “things to do in [city] tonight.” The evening tour wins that slot when it has bookable same-day availability, a title that reads like what people search, an accurate price, and a healthy rating. The moment the museum raises the family-pass price or the guide calls in sick and the slot should close, the feed has to carry that change within minutes — or the surface lies on the museum’s behalf.

How to check what your listing says right now

Because the surface renders from a feed you cannot see directly, you audit it the way a traveler experiences it: from the outside. This is why operators increasingly monitor Google Things to do as its own surface, alongside where they rank on the OTAs.

• Open an incognito window — logged-in Google personalizes results — and search your own product name plus “tickets.”
• Confirm the price shown matches your current live price to the cent, not a legacy product.
• Check today’s availability: does the module offer same-day slots when your calendar has them open?
• Search the generic discovery query (“things to do in [your city]”, “[your city] museum tickets”) and see whether you appear at all, and above or below competitors.
• Note the rating displayed and whether it reflects your most recent reviews.
• Repeat weekly during peak season, and immediately after any price change, so a stale feed never runs unnoticed.

What makes a listing win the module is consistent across every case: bookable same-day availability, a price that matches reality, and review signals strong and recent enough that Google trusts the listing. None of that is bought — it is kept accurate.

Questions operators actually ask

Do I have to pay to appear on Google Things to do?

No. Free booking links surface your inventory at no cost once you are connected, and you are not charged when a traveler clicks through. Things to do ads are a separate, optional paid format where you bid for more prominent placement and pay per click. Most operators start with the free links and add ads only if the surface converts well for them.

How do I get listed if I don’t want to build a Google integration?

You connect through your booking system or a connectivity partner rather than integrating with Google directly. Google explicitly recommends this route for individual operators and small reservation systems. Check Google’s approved-partner list for your vendor; if they are on it, listing is a matter of enabling the channel and mapping your products, not a development project.

Why does Google show the wrong price or availability for my tour?

Because the surface prints exactly what your product feed carries. A wrong price almost always means a legacy or duplicate product is still active in the feed, and wrong availability means your calendar sync is stale. Fix it at the source in your booking system and confirm the change by searching your product incognito, since Google honors what the listing shows at checkout.

What makes one listing rank above another in the module?

For the free surface, listings with bookable same-day availability, accurate pricing, and strong recent review signals tend to win, because they best answer the near-me buyer. For Things to do ads, placement is an auction: Google weighs your bid against ad quality, meaning how well the listing matches the search and how complete its content is.