Travel content sites have in recent years avoided going all-in with booking services - but Culture Trip is one that is going to buck the trend and try the online travel agency model.
The UK-based operation, brainchild of psychiatrist Belgian Kris Naudts who also happens to have a passion for travel, is planning to launch an OTA within the site in the second quarter of this year.
Initially targeting travelers who are looking for accommodation, Culture Trip will include a full search and booking service as part of the site.
The content and availability will be provided by software and distribution service Digital Trip but Culture Trip will handle all customer service and be the merchant of record.
The idea is not throw in hundreds of thousands of properties, traditional OTA-style - instead, it will hand-pick properties that "fit the overall Culture Trip message and ethos."
Going its own way
Until now, Culture Trip has provided affiliate links from its content (mostly listicle-type pieces) to Expedia Inc-owned Hotels.com, where the user can make a booking.
Anthony Anderson, Culture Trip's director of product monetization who previously worked for ground transportation service Halio, says the site wants to position itself in "new parts of the consumer funnel," after six years of creating content around experiences, quirky cultural references in a country and destinations.
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"We think this is a market that is open to us now," Anderson says, "so if we can make people aware of the options of where to stay when they get to a destination."
The next stage would be to introduce a flight booking service, he adds.
Other types of booking services such as tours and activities, which already feature heavily in its content, would be an obvious step to consider over time.
There will be a marketing to push to highlight the new accommodation booking system around the time of the launch, Anderson explains.
Capitalizing on numbers
Anderson acknowledges that the strategy being adopted by Culture Trip is a rare one given that most content sites usually consider only working as an affiliate link provider to existing OTAs or, at most, embed a booking module as part of a white label agreement.
The company believes that its existing profile and growth rate is enough to warrant the push into full-blown OTA land.
Anderson claims the site has 12 million unique visitors a month - trebling in number since 2016 - and it has achieved 4.7 million Facebook followers.
Video content has also been a large driver of the site's growth, with a massive 1.3 billion views of its content during 2017.
One of the last significant success stories in this area was British brand Mr & Mrs Smith, which started life in 2003 as a glossy book that featured recommendations of high-end hotels.
The company went online and later bought a hotel booking engine so that it could take reservations for customers.