The travel industry is ready for disruption, but working in travel might prove to be really hard. In my keynote, I'll cover few opportunities for travel startups at the moment and will tell about difficulties that might arise while working in this field.
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Valentin Dombrovsky Travel startups challenges and opportunities
1. Travel Startups Challenges and Opportunities
Valentin Dombrovsky for Software Engineering Conference, Kiev
03.09.2016
2.
3. 1. Online travel landscape - find your niche.
2. You've got an idea, now what? (Or why you shouldn't do a
travel startup)
3. B2C and B2B startups - where's the biggest potential?
4. Disrupting the market - understanding key opportunities.
6. But in fact there’s no such clear path
•Booking websites might become source of inspiration
•Meta-search websites enable booking
•Travelers read reviews to do their research and planning
•Lots of activity happens offline (we think about travels all the time ☺)
•Major players tend to build (or acquire) solutions for all parts of the
trip planning process
•Etc.
7. Traveler
f
Airlines, Hotels, Cruises, Tours & Activities, Transfers, Airport Parking, Car Rentals and Insurance
OTAs
Search
Corporate Travel &
Traditional Agencies
Hotel Search Engines
GDS
Distribution, Loyalty &
Ancillary Platforms
Metasearch
PMS
Cruises
Channel Management
T
r
a
v
e
l
e
r
Airport Transfers
Multimodal
Tours and Activities
Car Rentals
Peer Markets
Insurance
Travel Inspiration
Airport Parking
Travel Media/Marketing
Travel Itinerary/Planning
8. Are you doing b2b or b2c (or b2b2c)?
Are you doing it for leisure travel or for corporate
travel?
Are you doing it for specific niche?
9. Things to take into account on travel market
• The product costs are high
• There’s high sensitivity to the product price
• There’s high sensitivity to company brand
• Travel periodicity varies
“The barrier for entry is low – the barrier for disruption is
high” (Tnooz)
10. Build for the market – not for yourself
Do customer development
Understand your niche
Do the things that do not scale
12. Starting B2C Travel Startup:
Start with sales (tour agency)
Start with content
Focus on specific destinations/target audiences
“Social”, trip planning, inspiration usually don’t work
Think about “adding value” to other travel companies
13. Why b2c travel planning doesn’t work?
Let’s assume your product/R&D execution was perfect. You nailed it. You built the ultimate
travel planner/travel content site for a sizable audience.
• Now all you need to do is:
• Get a lot of people who travel to hear about it, just as they are getting ready to plan a trip
• Quickly get them up-to-speed on your product so they realize their investment in learning your
workflow will pay off, so they actually use it to plan their trip
• Make sure they use it for the actual hotel bookings etc. so you get the affiliate fees
• Invest the affiliate fees you got for those bookings to acquire the next customers (bidding
against the company who paid you those fees)
• Done!
https://www.tnooz.com/article/why-you-should-never-consider-a-travel-planning-startup/
16. B2B Travel Startups
Long sales cycles
Product should solve business problems and do it well
You need trust + salesforce for traction
Your offering needs to be really compelling for business even to start
analyzing it
Still, if you’re doing B2C, think about B2B2C
18. Disruption
•Right technologies at right time
•Something “truly new or 10 times better”
•Compelling offer – truly simple solutions from customer POV
•Understand your potential but start small
20. This could be useful:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/travel.startups.russia/ - Travel Startups Community
https://www.facebook.com/groups/travel.startups.intl/ - Travel Startups Intl.
Community
