Answers
Everything, answered without the hedging.
How the marketplace works, what it costs, who you actually book with, what verification does and does not promise, and how creator metrics are proven.
Quick answer
How does EuropeanTravelCompanies.com work?
EuropeanTravelCompanies.com is a three-sided European travel marketplace. Travellers describe a trip once and receive priced offers from up to eight verified travel companies that operate in that destination — free, with no obligation, and with the booking made directly with the company rather than through ETC. Travel companies pay for access to matched leads and can also find B2B partners on the opportunities board. Creators connect their social accounts through official OAuth so brands see platform-verified reach rather than self-reported numbers. Every company is checked for legal registration, operating licences, current insurance and client references before its listing appears.
- Cost for travellers
- Free, always
- Companies per request
- Up to 8
- Typical first offer
- Within a few hours
- Booking party
- The travel company
- Company plans
- €0 / €49 / €149 / €399 per month
- Data hosting
- EU, GDPR
Last updated August 2026 · EuropeanTravelCompanies.com
For travellers
What does it cost a traveller to use EuropeanTravelCompanies?
Nothing, at any point. Submitting a trip request, receiving offers, comparing them side by side and messaging companies are all free, and there is no obligation to book. Travel companies pay for access to qualified leads, which is why we never need to take a cut of your trip price. The number a company quotes you is the number it set.
Do I book with ETC or with the travel company?
With the travel company. ETC matches your request, hosts the comparison and keeps the messaging in one place, but the company is the operator and your contracting party — it holds the licences, carries the insurance and signs the booking. That division is deliberate, and it is why verification matters: the business behind the offer has to be real and licensed where it operates.
How many companies will contact me?
Up to eight, and usually fewer. Requests go only to companies that operate in your destination, work in the category you need and handle your budget range. We cap the number on purpose — a request blasted to forty companies produces noise, slow replies and worse pricing, because no one believes they have a real chance.
How quickly do offers arrive?
Most first offers land within a few hours, and the bulk within a working day. Requests that include fixed or near-fixed dates and a budget range are answered fastest, because a company can quote something concrete instead of opening with clarifying questions.
Can I stay anonymous until I choose a company?
Yes. Companies see your trip brief, not your contact details. Messaging runs through the platform, and your email and phone number are released only when you accept an offer or explicitly share them. That also gives us a record if something goes wrong.
What if something goes wrong on the trip?
Your contract is with the travel company, so your first route is to the company itself — and how a company behaves when a ferry is cancelled is exactly what we ask its references about. If it is unresolved, report it to us: a substantiated complaint triggers an immediate re-check of that company’s verification regardless of what it pays us. Financial protection against an operator failing comes from the package travel rules in your own country and from your payment method, not from ETC.
For travel companies
What does it cost a travel company?
Listing is free, with three matched leads a month. Paid tiers start at €49 a month for the Verified badge and 25 leads, €149 for 100 leads and featured placement, and €399 for 500 leads, API access and multi-brand profiles. Commission applies only to bookings the platform actually facilitated end to end.
Can a company pay to be verified, or to rank higher?
It can pay to have the same checks processed faster — roughly two working days instead of ten — and it can pay for featured placement, which is labelled as such wherever it appears. It cannot pay to skip a check or to pass one it failed, and paid placement never rewrites the organic match order. Subscription tier and verification outcome are decided by different people against different criteria.
What is checked before a listing goes public?
Four things: that the legal entity exists in the jurisdiction it claims, that the operating licences that jurisdiction requires are valid and confirmed with the issuing body rather than accepted as a scan, that professional liability insurance is current, and that at least two client references confirm comparable delivered work in a phone call. Re-checked annually and immediately on a substantiated complaint.
How are leads matched to companies?
By destination coverage, service category, party size, budget band and current response performance. Companies that answer quickly and get chosen see more volume; companies that leave requests unanswered see less, whatever their tier. Ranking inputs are documented rather than mysterious, because a marketplace that hides its ranking rules ends up selling them.
Can I find B2B partners rather than travellers?
Yes — that is what the opportunities board is for. Operators post and answer partnership requests: a Nordic operator looking for an Aegean ground handler, a hotel group seeking MICE representation, a DMC offering allocation to whitelabel partners. It runs on the same verification layer as the consumer side.
For creators and brands
How does ETC verify a creator’s audience?
Creators connect Instagram, TikTok or YouTube through each platform’s official OAuth flow, granting read-only analytics scopes. Followers, reach and engagement are then synced from the official APIs, which is why a profile carries a "Metrics verified" badge rather than a self-reported number. Nothing is screenshotted, scraped or rounded up.
Does ETC ever ask for my social media password?
Never, and no legitimate platform will. Connection happens entirely on the platform’s own login page via OAuth with PKCE — we never see your credentials, and we never request permission to post, delete, message or follow on your behalf. If any service asks you to type a social password into its own form, that alone is a reason to walk away.
Where are the access tokens stored?
In an encrypted vault held separately from the application database, server-side only. Tokens are never placed in the browser, in local storage, in URLs or in logs and error reports, and staff — including administrators — cannot read them in plaintext. Disconnecting is one click and revokes the grant at the platform itself, not just in our records.
How do creators and brands actually work together here?
A brand or travel company posts a campaign brief with a budget and deliverables; matched creators apply or are invited; terms, content approval and payment run through the platform so both sides have a record. Verified metrics are the point — the reach in the brief is the reach that exists.
Platform, data and trust
Where is the data hosted?
In the EU, under GDPR. Fonts and assets are self-hosted rather than fetched from third-party CDNs, so simply loading a page does not hand your IP address to another company. You can request an export or deletion of your data at any time.
Are reviews real?
Reviews can only be left by a party with a confirmed working relationship recorded on the platform, so there is no open review form to farm. That makes the volume lower than on sites that accept anything, which is the trade we chose. A newly verified company with no reviews is shown as unproven rather than padded.
Which countries does ETC cover?
Europe and the Mediterranean rim, with the deepest coverage in Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Croatia and Switzerland. Coverage is listed per country rather than claimed globally, because a directory that says "worldwide" usually means "thin everywhere".
Free · No obligation
One brief. Real, priced offers.
Describe the trip once and let verified companies that operate there come back to you.