App to Find Things to Do on Vacation: 8 Tools Compared

Pixi Activities: what Pixidia’s tool does, and what it doesn’t

Three Viator activity ideas, or just one, with the reason for each pick

According to its « How it works » page, consulted on October 26, 2026, Pixi Activities is free and asks for no account, name or email. One sentence is enough to describe your trip; the reply comes in the language of the question (French, English, German, Spanish, Italian). Pixi searches only among Viator’s activities and weighs everyone’s age, pace, budget, interests, guide language, free cancellation, reviews, accessibility (stroller, wheelchair, little walking) and the price for the dates given. It suggests three ideas, or just one, with the reason for each. Pixidia states that the accessibility information comes from what the organizer declares on Viator.

Its limits

• Viator catalog only, so no free-access places or walks that need no ticket. Some free tours are booked on Viator (the Alfama free tour, for example); whether Pixi suggests them was not verified.
• Pixi does not book for you: you book on Viator.
• It is an AI and can be wrong: confirm the price on Viator before paying, since the prices shown are indicative.
• Messages are deleted two hours later at the most, with no copy kept.

To compare, describe the Lisbon scenario to Pixi and check its answer against the first table.

Method: nine criteria, open sources, stated limits

All eight tools go through the same nine criteria: catalog, reviews, price for your group, cancellation, guide language, accessibility, personalization, booking and cost. Everything was consulted on October 26, 2026 on official documents or cited sources, some of them older, and most figures carry their source and date (in the cell or in the note under the table). Only Viator was also queried through its partner API. No tool was tried in real use: Pixi Activities, like the others, is described from its pages.

Could not be read (access denied or empty page): the Tripadvisor Experiences pages, the Klook and GetYourGuide activity pages, the viator.com site and OpenAI’s help page on ChatGPT apps. These cells say « not verified », with no estimate. Counting methods differ from one tool to the next: catalog figures cannot be compared with each other.

Lisbon, December 28 to 30, 2026: the « from » price versus your group’s price

Two adults, two children aged 8 and 11, three days

2 adults, children aged 8 and 11 December 28 to 30, 2026 €230 for the group French-language guide declared

Running example: a family of four in Lisbon. The prices come from Viator’s API, pulled on October 26, 2026 for this group, and they move with the date, the number of travelers and availability. The language check in this example is for a French-speaking guide, because the example was first run for the French edition of this article; the question is the same for any language.

Take the dolphin-watching trip with a marine biologist, shown as « from €65 » in the results, which is the fare for one adult. For the family of four it costs €230: €130 for the two adults (2 × €65) and €100 for the two children, with departures at 9:30 am and 2 pm, and a duration of 2 hours 30 minutes. The « child » bracket runs from 5 to 11 years old, so both of your children pay the same fare. Cancellation is free up to 24 hours before departure, and the operator declares an easy physical level.

Pixidia tip: a « from » price is a floor, not your group’s price: here it covers only one adult. Ask for the price for your dates and everyone’s age before comparing two tools.

Lisbon: Dolphin Watching with a Marine Biologist – Ocean Safari★ 4.96 · 977 reviewsPartner link €230 for 2 adults and 2 children aged 8 and 11, December 28 to 30, 2026 (pulled October 26, 2026, subject to change)

See dates

Source: Viator partner API (2 adults and 2 children aged 8 and 11, December 29, 2026), checked on October 26, 2026. “From” prices: API search results. Group prices subject to change.

For the rest of your stay: Christmas in Lisbon in 2026 and wine and coast day trips from Lisbon.

Eight tools, nine criteria: what open sources establish

Three tables apply the same criteria to the eight tools. « Not verified » flags a page that could not be read; « not disclosed », information that is absent from the open pages.

Sources: GetYourGuide terms, Tripadvisor 10-K, Klook F-1, Civitatis Reviews page, Viator API. Checked on October 26, 2026.

Sources: GetYourGuide’s Lisbon page, Civitatis Mallorca listing (French-language page), Google Maps help, Pixi’s « How it works », Viator API (sample sorted by rating, not representative of the catalog). Checked on October 26, 2026.

Sources: GetYourGuide terms, Tripadvisor press release of July 30, 2026, Klook F-1, Civitatis (French-language site), Google Maps help, Kami Labs. The Pixi Activities cells draw on its « How it works » page; its operation was not tested. Checked on October 26, 2026.

The other seven tools, one by one

GetYourGuide

An intermediary platform: it acts as the suppliers’ commercial agent, with the contract concluded between the traveler and the supplier (Art. 3.1 of its terms). For equivalent activities offered by several suppliers, it ranks them on several factors (popularity, diversity, ratings, performance, revenue generated), including the suppliers’ commission, which it presents as one factor among others (Art. 3.3). Registration is not required to access the platform, but is needed for all features (Art. 4.2); the equivalent rule on the other platforms was not recorded.

Viator

More than 425,000 experiences (10-K, February 2026). It is the only tool read through its API, because Pixidia is an affiliate: its cells are better filled in, which says nothing about its value.

Tripadvisor (Experiences)

A showcase for discovery and reviews of the same inventory (10-K); its booking flow remains unverified. Its reviews come from any user: Viator treats them as unverified compared with its own (partner glossary), whereas the rating of a Viator product blends the two.

Klook

Founded in 2014, it calls itself the leading pan-regional experiences platform in Asia-Pacific by transaction volume in 2024, according to a study by Euromonitor that it commissioned (F-1), with a majority of its merchants in the region: the tool to look at for Asia.

Civitatis

A Spanish platform that describes itself as a reference for the Spanish-speaking market: Spanish (Spain, Argentina and Mexico), English, French, Italian and Portuguese, but no German. Its site is available in English, with U.S. dollars and British pounds among its currencies. Its Lisbon free tours are free, tip not included; the one on the listing read refuses groups of more than 6 people: a family of four gets in, a group of seven would not.

Google Maps and « Things to do »

The open help pages describe neither booking nor payment: who collects the money and where you finalize the purchase was not verified. The Explore tab offers lists based on reviews from the community and from partners, adapted to your location and the time of day, with partner lists in certain cities only. « Things to do » presents partners’ offers through free listings and ads that they pay for only when clicked. Cancellation is not disclosed: it depends on the partner seller, and the help page consulted sets no rule.

General-purpose AI assistant

For this one use, it brainstorms ideas in free text, but it has no inventory, no cancellation policy and no guaranteed price. Google notes that generative AI is experimental (Google blog, August 6, 2026). Gemini’s Viator app finishes the booking on Viator, for the United States and in English only; for ChatGPT, not verified.

Which tool for which need

No ranking: each need points to the tools the sources name; for Pixi Activities, only its own page is cited, with no test.

Sources: same pages as the previous tables. Checked on October 26, 2026.

What other guides don’t tell you

Five comparison guides were read on October 26, 2026: Clubic, voyagesetc.fr, Generali, Tom’s Guide and ViaTravelers; a sixth article, The Traveler, is about Viator’s reviews. The BFM article could not be opened. They miss six points.

• Viator and Tripadvisor sell the same inventory. The 10-K describes a shared platform of more than 425,000 experiences: counting them as two catalogs means counting the same offer twice. Clubic (July 26, 2025) rates the two brands separately, without saying their experiences are the same; voyagesetc.fr still says more than 300,000 for Viator. Tripadvisor 10-K report (consulted October 26, 2026).
• The rating of a Viator product blends verified and unverified reviews. Across five Lisbon products, the Tripadvisor share runs from 41% to 99%. ViaTravelers and The Traveler (June and July 2026) do not flag this blend. Viator partner glossary (April 5, 2022) and API (consulted October 26, 2026).
• A « from » price is not your group’s price. In Lisbon, the gap comes from the number of travelers and the options (example table). Clubic gives no price, voyagesetc.fr a single example (Florence). Viator API (consulted October 26, 2026).
• A page in your language is not a guide in your language. The check was run in French: of 100 Lisbon products sorted by rating, 95 have French text that was machine-translated and 37 declare a French-speaking guide (non-representative sample). Four guides out of five do not compare the guide’s language. Viator API (consulted October 26, 2026).
• Free cancellation is not a universal « 24 hours ». Klook sets three types per activity, Viator ranked about 10% of its products as non-refundable (2022 glossary; 2 out of 100 in the Lisbon sample, 2026 API), and the French Consumer Code excludes any withdrawal right for leisure activities on a fixed date. Voyagesetc.fr nonetheless gives 24 hours as the general rule. Klook FAQ and article L221-28 of the French Consumer Code (consulted October 26, 2026).
• Accessibility is compared nowhere. None of the five guides read compares it. Viator has the operator declare it, Civitatis has a section on the listing read (Mallorca), and Google Maps shows it for places, in some countries only. Google Maps help and Civitatis listing (French-language page; consulted October 26, 2026).

Checklist before you book

• Cancellation: the exact condition, the deadline and the share refunded. For an activity on a fixed date, French law grants no 14-day withdrawal period (article L221-28, 12°).
• Price: the total for all travelers, with their ages, on your date, and what it includes.
• Guide language: the language of the option and the day you chose, not that of the page.
• Accessibility: what the operator declares; if the listing says nothing, ask before paying.
• Reviews: who wrote them, when, and how many. Under French law, a site must say whether its reviews are checked and date them (article L111-7-2).

Source: article L221-28 (in force since May 28, 2022) and article L111-7-2 (in force since February 17, 2024), French Consumer Code, Légifrance, consulted October 26, 2026.

Transparency

Pixi Activities is Pixidia’s own tool, and it is one of the eight tools compared here, so this article is not an independent ranking. It names no winner either. Pixidia earns a commission from Viator when you book through its links, at no extra cost to you. According to the « How it works » page of Pixi Activities, this commission « never changes the order of Pixi’s suggestions ». Apart from the Viator card in the Lisbon section, the links to the other tools are plain links with no affiliation.

No tool was tried in real use: Pixi Activities, like the others, is described from its pages.