Tikata was conceived by me, Matthijs Poelmans. In early 2016, I wanted to spend a day with my family at Sea Life in Scheveningen, the Netherlands. It all started with a search for the best deal on the internet. Soon enough, I got lost in a jungle of discount vouchers, loyalty programs with tokens, offers, and websites claiming to offer the best deals. After an afternoon of searching and puzzling, it turned out that there were more than 25 different tickets circulating, just in the Netherlands!
Each deal had its own conditions, discounts, and validity. It became quite a task to calculate with all this information what truly was the best deal to go to Sea Life with the family. It was only after hours of puzzling that I came to the conclusion: the best deal consisted of a combination of online tickets and loyalty programs. There had to be an easier way!
Every provider of discount vouchers or cheap tickets would like you to buy all your tickets from them. However, a thorough online search shows that it's advantageous to "shop around". For a group of four people, it can be much more advantageous to buy one ticket with Air Miles, an online ticket with a discount from Groupon, and a "duo" ticket directly from the Sea Life website.
It takes some work, but in practice, it can save dozens of euros on a day at the amusement park or zoo. For larger groups, the discount compared to the box office price often exceeds 100 euros!
With this idea in mind, I started working on it, and in early 2017, the first version of Tikata went live. At the time, it was only for the Dutch market and offered only about 30 outings. The idea behind Tikata.nl was simple:
I give you a list of all possible tickets in circulation. Not just the deal where I make money.
For those tickets, we show the real prices and conditions: so there are no hidden costs or the need to first buy a €200 annual subscription if you click on a link.
We only show active deals. So it's not the case that you click on a link and find out that the tickets were sold out six months ago.
After significant growth in 2018 and 2019, it was time to roll out Tikata internationally. Designs were made at the end of 2019, and on June 1, 2020, the international version of Tikata went live: Tikatadeals.com. Even more parks, more countries, and many more ticket providers, so you really get the best deal.
Unfortunately, there was a significant dip due to the pandemic, but now that all lockdowns are lifted, we're growing rapidly. Nationally and internationally!
All other discount sites make money by redirecting you to a page where you can buy tickets. Those tickets are also on Tikata, but I also include the deals that don't earn me a commission. At the moment, Tikata costs me a lot of time (and money): to keep track of all the deals, host the website and develop it, send newsletters and blogs, etc.
I work on this 24/7 with the help of a large group of freelancers: 2 developers from Pakistan, blog writers from Germany, England, Spain, Italy, and France, and occasionally some help from a Russian for properly setting up Google Analytics.
After a significant investment in 2017 and 2018, some money started coming in in 2019, which I immediately used to transform the site into the international version Tikatadeals. In short: it takes a lot of time and money, and I do my best to keep the information as up-to-date as possible, but with your help, it will get even better: let me know if you find any mistakes or if you've found a great deal that's not yet on Tikata.
I try to fix mistakes as quickly as possible and post new deals. If you can help in any other way, we'd love to hear about it too.
For collaboration and more facts about Tikata, I refer you to our collaboration page.