STARTUP STAGE: Eddy Travels provides personalized trip planning in messaging apps

Eddy Travels

Eddy Travels is an AI-powered travel assistant that functions inside messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Slack, Viber and Line. 

The company has a revenue-sharing partnership with Skyscanner for bookings of flights, hotels and car rentals. It is also partnering with companies that provide travel-related services such as insurance, luggage storage, packages and more. 

Describe both the business and technology aspects of your startup.

Eddy Travels is an artificial intelligence-powered travel assistant with voice understanding that allows people to plan their trips in minutes. Travelers can send a text or voice message to Eddy Travels and get personalized suggestions for the best flights, hotels, car rentals and other travel-related services instantly. The digital assistant is already available on Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Viber, Slack, Line and WhatsApp. 

What inspired you to create this company?

While traveling in China, Edmundas Balčikonis, co-founder and CEO of Eddy Travels, noticed how truly irreplaceable WeChat had become. The locals were using it for everything from chatting with friends to paying for coffee, making restaurant reservations and even booking hotels and flights.

Now, communication platforms in the Western world are catching up too. Companies like Facebook are already testing payment methods and releasing new business tools each month. Once these features are fully implemented, chat commerce is set to explode and impact many industries, including travel. When you combine the advancements of natural language processing, the rapid development of messaging applications and the desire people have for simplicity and personalization when planning their trips, you start seeing how relevant Eddy Travels is.

Give us your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the company.

• Strengths: A technical team with the right skills and experience. Our custom natural language processing system is already better than any off-the-shelf solution for travel. As we do not hold any inventory, we can partner with the best travel service providers and help our users plan their trips more easily.
• Weaknesses: Integrating directly with some of the biggest messaging apps in the world was an amazing way to kickstart Eddy Travels. However, we are limited by what functionalities we can have on them. To alleviate it, we are planning to launch a web-based platform and a mobile application later this year, allowing our users to seamlessly plan their trips on any device they choose.
• Opportunities: Facebook is testing payment systems and is planning to merge the backend of Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram inboxes, which will accelerate mobile commerce in the West. The natural language understanding is still an unsolved problem in the travel industry.
• Threats: Some online travel agencies, large tech companies and a number of startups are launching their own digital assistants for travel, potentially becoming our competitors in the future.

What are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate from both the customer and the industry perspective?

People find the trip planning experience increasingly overwhelming, especially on mobile devices. For each trip, you have to go through dozens of different websites and apps, trying to find the right information and the most suitable deals.

The available platforms offer little to no personalization, forcing travelers to waste a lot of time and energy sorting through irrelevant offers. It is even harder to plan group travel, as there is no comfortable way to quickly share and discuss travel deals with friends or family.

On the other hand, travel companies are struggling to keep up with all the new technology trends and changing user behaviors. It is hard to integrate into all the new channels and technologies. Often, travel companies do not have strong in-house IT resources and rely on outsourcing. But when it comes to developing machine learning solutions for personalization or natural language processing, it can be difficult to even communicate what needs to be built. Now, travel companies have an alternative to partner with Eddy Travels and get instant access to new potential users on different chat apps.

So you've got the product, now how will you get lots of customers?

Most of our initial users came from organic word of mouth and social sharing. We have recently started experimenting with paid advertising campaigns on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram, and we are already seeing some great results for acquiring new users in Canada and the United States. Other marketing channels, such as referrals, travel-related articles, influencers and PR, will be equally important in the future.

Tell us what process you've gone through to establish a genuine need for your company and the size of the addressable market.

As founders, we had been researching this topic for over a year before we established a company in December 2018. It included market research, interviewing fellow travelers and testing different existing solutions. Finally, we built a couple of prototypes with available chatbot builders and presented them to potential users for feedback.

According to a study by Phocuswright and Google, nearly six out of 10 travelers feel that brands should tailor their information based on personal preferences or past behaviors. Also, as much as 55% of respondents said they had to check too many sources of travel information before making a decision.

Since launching our first MVP, we attracted over eight thousand users and one hundred companies. The feedback we received from them confirmed the growing need for simplicity and personalization.

In terms of market size, global online travel sales are projected to grow to $817 billion by 2020. However, an even larger share of all bookings still happens offline via travel agents. We are confident that by creating an AI-powered travel assistant that puts convenience and personalization at the core of the experience, we can successfully capture a significant portion of the entire travel booking market.

How and when will you make money?

Eddy Travels operates as a highly curated marketplace for travel. The digital assistant connects people with the best travel products and services right in their favorite messaging app.

We already have a revenue-sharing partnership with Skyscanner, one of the best travel metasearch engines in the world, for flights, hotels and car rentals. We also have affiliate partnerships with SafetyWing, Vertoe, G Adventures and a number of other travel companies. This provides our users with options for travel medical insurance, daily luggage storage, tour packages and more.

By connecting with more service providers, we can provide a smoother travel planning experience and have more opportunities for sales than individual travel service brands. Our long-term goal is to assist travelers throughout the entire customer journey - from discovering travel offers to booking them.

What are the backgrounds and previous achievements of the founding team, and why do you have what it takes to succeed with this business?

The startup was founded by Edmundas Balčikonis, Pranas Kiziela and Adomas Baltagalvis, all of whom have a deep passion for travel.

Balčikonis, the co-founder and CEO, previously founded and led as CEO the TrackDuck startup, which was acquired by InVisionApp Inc., the world's leading design collaboration platform. He is also a digital nomad who visited over 20 countries in just the last two years.

Kiziela, the co-founder and CTO, has been developing software for over a decade and previously led the development of machine learning at an ad tech startup based in Los Angeles.

Baltagalvis, the co-founder and CMO, during his seven years as a digital marketer, has helped his clients generate over $30 million in revenues worldwide. He is also an avid traveler who has visited over 30 countries.

What's been the most difficult part of founding the business so far?

One of the main challenges was building a functioning chatbot that people would like to use. It required finding and recruiting a great team with a diverse set of tech skills and obsessing over how to improve the user experience. Also, it took over half a year to build and test our own natural language processing system, until we reached the level where we could call it Eddy Travels v1.0.

Generally, travel startups face a fairly tough time making an impact - so why are you going to be one of the lucky ones?

We have already proven that with the Eddy Travels AI assistant we can attract users from Canada and the U.S. at a very low price and effectively convert them into customers. The continuous improvements in the language understanding of the chatbot have led to a higher user engagement too, resulting in more conversations and searches per user. We are already generating revenue and show better results every month.