TLabs Showcase on travel startups featuring US-based Kutoa, an online listing service targeting "socially green" travelers.
Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?
The co-founders of Kutoa are a husband and wife team who share a passion for travel. Josh has a background in business, and Tessa has a background in international policy. Both have law degrees and are currently working full-time as attorneys in Kansas City.
Tessa developed the idea for Kutoa after years of traveling the globe as a student, volunteer, and adventure-seeker. In her travels, she came across impressive lodges, hotels, and adventure companies that were deeply intertwined with their communities.
She stayed at a bed and breakfast in Peru that ran a home and school for orphaned children; an ecolodge in the Ecuadorian Amazon that operated as a 100% partnership owned by the indigenous people who used the profits to support the local families and their schools; and a hiking lodge in Lesotho that, during her stay, was the subject of a responsible tourism study by a PhD student from the UK.
Connecting with local people and cultures has always been important to Tessa, who volunteered in Tanzania in 2001 and subsequently raised the tuition money to put one of her most promising students through both secondary school and university.
That student is now getting ready to graduate from university in Tanzania with a degree in teaching and is funding her own siblings through secondary school.
Tessa realized in early 2011 that hotels, lodges, and travel companies around the world are impacting, improving, and empowering their local communities, yet no centralized place existed to locate them.
Both Josh and Tessa realized that other like-minded travelers out there want to find trips that make a difference. And thus the idea for Kutoa was born.
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
We put our own savings into the website development and marketing. We did not receive any outside funding.
What problem are you trying to solve?
Kutoa aims to fill a gap in the market by connecting socially conscious travelers with hotels and travel companies that already donate money, goods, and services to important local causes.
These two market sectors already exist, and Kutoa provides the first centralized and user-friendly way for them to find each other.
Kutoa ultimately hopes to inspire hotels and travel companies that currently do not meet Kutoa’s selection criteria but that develop socially green practices in order to benefit from Kutoa’s growing network of socially conscious travelers.
Describe the business, core products and services?
Kutoa is an online community where socially conscious travelers can find accommodations and travel companies that make a positive difference to the communities in which they operate.
Kutoa is the first company that exclusively lists hotels, lodges, and travel companies that donate money, goods, or services to local social causes.
Who are your key customers and users at launch?
Our key users are travelers with flexible travel plans who are looking for ideas about where to go on their next trip.
Kutoa caters to travelers of all styles, budgets, and adventure levels. But Kutoa’s largest user-base will be the "grown-up backpacker" who wants to see the world and connect with local people, cultures, and causes in the places they visit.
Kutoa travelers are people who care about sustainable development, the environment, and philanthropic causes such as health and education.
Our actual customers are the businesses who meet our selection criteria – the hotels, lodges, and travel companies that donate money, goods, or services to important local causes.
Kutoa sells the listing space on its website to these member businesses, who can leverage their socially green practices to gain a competitive edge in marketing to travelers.
Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?
We did not have formal testing phase for customers to validate, and we did not solicit investors.
What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?
The revenue strategy is to attract qualified businesses to purchase listing space on Kutoa’s website, which is free for travelers to search.
Currently, during our launch phase, we are offering a free six-month membership to qualifying hotels, lodges, and adventure companies in order to populate our database and provide travelers with a wide selection of socially green travel opportunities around the world.
At the end of the promotional phase, we will begin charging an affordable flat-rate annual fee to member businesses, with options for upgrades and additional advertising opportunities both on the site and through our newsletter.
SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
Strengths:
- Co-founders have extensive personal knowledge of the types of businesses they aim to attract as members, and they personally identify with the types of travelers they know will place value in choosing socially green travel over other options.
Weaknesses:
- Small staff and limited budget for marketing.
Opportunities:
- Connect with target travelers and businesses through pre-existing blogs and other online communities that have an established readership. The more website traffic we can generate, the more member businesses we can attract to join Kutoa.
Threats:
- Copycat websites with less rigorous selection criteria selling a watered-down version of Kutoa at higher volume.
Who advised you your idea isn't going to be successful and why didn't you listen to them?Some of the website developers we interviewed expressed a lack of understanding over the concept of socially green travel, which is understandable given that Kutoa coined that phrase and the term has yet to gain wide familiarity.
We believe in the concept and have faith that enough people out there are looking for trips like this, and we knew from extensive research that countless hotels and travel companies would already qualify thanks to their selfless dedication to their local communities.
The fact that some people did not know or understand the idea of socially green travel simply reinforced our notion that the concept needed a home and a platform to promote it.
What is your success metric 12 months from now?
Twelve months from now, Kutoa hopes to reach a membership of one hundred businesses who meet our socially green criteria.
Success will depend on continuous incoming interest from new businesses and travelers who are excited and eager to become a part of Kutoa and the movement it represents.
NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.