TLabs Showcase on travel startups featuring US-based CanaryHop, a new consumer-facing marketplace for tours and activities around the world.
Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?
CanaryHop is an online marketplace for activities and travel experiences.
We offer anything from getaway holiday deals to Hawaii, to guitar lessons in Barcelona. Basically we are the modern day classifieds for travel for the next generation.
We have a great international team with over 18 employees based in the United States, Singapore, New Zealand, Eastern Europe and Southern Africa.
The founders all have a diverse background in private equity, finance, and wireless application development.
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
My partners and I funded the initial capital of the company.
What problem are you trying to solve?
We came up with the idea of Canaryhop last summer while traveling through the South of France. We were on a beach with our families (and lots of kids) and were trying to figure out what to do in Cannes and Mougins.
We scoured the web, reviews and ended up with 20 hyperlinks that we emailed each other.
After several hours, if not, an entire day we were exactly where we started – nothing to do.
There had to be a better solution so we came up with the idea of having an exchange where locals could post great activities, concierges from hotels and local tour operators.
Our solution is to give travellers around the world a diverse set of local activities that they can book for their kids, for their themselves and can be accessible by locals, tourists, travel agencies and more in booking travel around the world.
Describe the business, core products and services?
The core products and services are local activities and experiences around the world.
Who are your key customers and users at launch?
Our key customers are travellers. We have seen users from all demographics. From college kids planning a semester at sea to my parents.
My parents booked some great tours in Paris and Prague just a few weeks ago.
Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?
No, we didn’t.
My partners and I have all had some success in the past in starting and selling business in various industries but we felt that was a gap in this part of the travel related business that we felt comfortable in the risk of taking on this venture.
What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?
Our business has several components that meet once laser focused strategy for profitability.
We would prefer to not dive into our ingredients but in the sixty days that we have been live we already have seen revenue come in the door and that is only going to grow in significant ways.
SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
Strengths:
- Focused heavily on the product. Without this nothing else matters as far as we are concerned. If we don’t believe in it, no one else will.
Weaknesses:
- Our team is small and we will need to hire additional members fast!
Opportunities:
- We believe the alternative activity space and classified market is a "new market" and our platform will be a win-win for the consumer and the activity provider.
Threats:
- Competition is heating up fast!
Who advised you your idea isn't going to be successful and why didn't you listen to them?We have been pretty cagey about sharing our plan with anyone.
What is your success metric 12 months from now?
Good question. Number of repeat users. We simply want our first time users to come back and book an activity again.
This tells us we have done our job.
NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.