Over Tikata
Tikata was created by me, Matthijs Poelmans. In early 2016, I wanted to spend a day with Sea family in Sea Life in Scheveningen, the Netherlands. It started with a search for the best deal on the internet. I quickly lost my way in a forest of discount vouchers, coin-saving programs, offers and websites claiming to offer the best deals. After an afternoon of searching and puzzle work it turned out that there were more than 25 different tickets in circulation and that in the Netherlands alone!
Each deal had its own conditions, discount and validity. It was quite a task to calculate with all this information what was really the best deal to go to Sea Life with the family. It was only after hours of puzzling that the conclusion was reached: the best deal consisted of a combination of online tickets and one and savings programs. That should be easier!
The discount is on the street!
Every provider of discount vouchers or cheap tickets would like you to buy all your tickets from them. However, a large online search shows that it is advantageous to "shop". For a group of four people it can be a lot cheaper to buy your one ticket with Air Miles, buy an online ticket with a discount at Groupon and a "duo" ticket at the Sea Life site itself.
It is a bit of work, but in practice it can save tens of euros on a day at an amusement park or zoo. For larger groups, the discount compared to the cash register price often exceeds 100 euros!
Tikata.nl is born
I started working on this idea and in early 2017 the first version of Tikata went live. At that time only for the Dutch market and with only about 30 outings. The idea behind Tikata.nl was simple:
- I will give you a list of all possible tickets in circulation. Not a limited list where you have to find out when they are valid and what the discount is, but all the tickets I know: with discount voucher, online tickets, with savings programs and with annual subscriptions. Everything
After a big greeting in 2018 and 2019, it was time to roll out Tikata internationally. The designs were made at the end of 2019 and on June 1, 2020 I hope to go live with the international version of Tikata: Tikatadeals.com. Even more parks, more countries and many more ticket providers, so you really get the very best deal.
That is certainly not free?
All other discount sites make money by linking you to a page where you can buy tickets. Those tickets are also on Tikata, but I also include the deals that do not earn any commission. At the moment Tikata costs me a lot of time (and money): to keep track of all deals, the hosting of the website and the construction and updating of the website, sending newsletters and blogs etc.
I work on that 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 to properly set up Google Analytics.
After a significant investment in 2017 and 2018, some money started to come in 2019, which I immediately used to convert the site into the international version of Tikata deals. 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 gets even better: let me know if you see any mistakes or if you have a great deal found that is not yet on Tikata.
I try to fix the mistakes as soon as possible and place the new deals. If you can help in any other way, we would also like to hear that.
For a collaboration and more facts about Tikata I refer to our collaboration page.