Booking tours and activities online is a hot trend in the Asian travel industry alongside taxi mobile app services that are attracting millions in funding.
In the past few years, a number of startups have entered the tours and activities market in Asia.
eOasia, the Singapore-based startup joins this list by connecting travellers with suppliers offering tours and activities in Asia.
The company's founder Florian spotted a problem a year ago - when he wanted to book a cruise day tour in Bali, he could neither find any reliable information/supplier, nor any online platform connecting travellers to local suppliers.
eOasia was launched out of this personal frustration, he also claims booking a hotel or flight online was much easy than booking an activity/experience online.
eOasia, as the name indicates, is targeting only the Asian market where it is aiming to web-enable activity suppliers for travellers to book activities online.
Currently, the startup has about 1,000 activities across 12 countries. eOasia is self-funded, and it is looking to raise funds soon.
Q&A with eOasia team:
What problem does the business solve?
eOasia simplifies the travel experience when people on vacation are not flying, sleeping or eating.
On one hand, eOasia is making the traveller’s life easier by offering a large range of tours and activities (1,000 experiences in 30 destinations) with accurate information and reliable operators. On the other hand, the business solves several issues for local operators.
With the tours and activities industry being fragmented in Asia and the large size of local operators's businesses, most of tours and activities suppliers do not have the competencies and the resources to market themselves online.
Creating a website, driving traffic and enabling an online payment solution are costly and time consuming.
eOasia is helping them by bringing a sophisticated online solution to them.
We are considering ourselves as a travellers' company - "made by travellers for travellers".
Our aim is not just to list some activities online, its much more than that. We travel, we meet some activity suppliers, we live some experiences and after that, we select and propose the valuable and interesting ones to other travellers.
Size of the team, names of founders, management roles and key personnel?
We are five passionate associates in the Asia travel industry:
- Florian has been living in Asia for ten years and working in the travel and hospitality industry
- William, eternal backpacker and fond of Asia
- Marco (CFO), Ben (Legal and Marketing) and Seb (CTO) has been in the vacation rental industry for more than ten years
Estimation of market size?Currently, only 2% of the $200 billion tours and activities business is purchased online. This percentage will grow with increasing technology and adoption of mobility.
Competition?
There are major global players such as GetYourGuide, Viator and also a few new players focusing only on Asia. The market is large and there is room for several competitors.
Currently, the industry is fragmented in Asia, being close to our customers and operators is extremely important. By being so, we understand the traveller’s expectations for each destination.
Another differentiation of our service is that we meet our suppliers directly. We aim to select valuable activities and not just try to increase the inventory.
Revenue model and strategy for profitability?
We have been travelling across Asia to select our 300 local operators with whom we are currently working.
By having a personal relationship with them, we connect travellers directly with suppliers, usually there are several intermediaries in this case.
We make money by charging per booking, but at operators’ costs. There are no mark-ups for our customers.
Why should people or companies use the business?
For travellers: The time they spend on searching for tours and activities on the web will be reduced. Rather, they will spend more time having fun on site with a selected activity supplier.
For local operators: They get a free tool to advertise and increase their visibility by bringing an efficient online booking solution.
What is the strategy for raising awareness and the customer/user acquisition (apart from PR)?
SEO, Adwords and affiliates (online and offline) are key for customer acquisition.
Our customers are looking for advice on things to do on site, our customer support process in this regard is helping us convert bookings.
Where do you see the company in three years’ time and what specific challenges do you anticipate having to overcome?
We aim to continue to offer travellers a better and faster way to enjoy their vacation by bringing a larger range of tours and activities (from many travel destinations) online.
Also, with the increasing adoption of mobile among travellers, one will look for best and cost-effective activities to do on site within the same day or next day.
Developing a web application, reducing the response time, ensuring stock availability and synchronizing operators’ calendars are future market challenges for us. The good news is that we have technical in-house capabilities to overcome these challenges.
What is wrong with the travel, tourism and hospitality industry that requires another startup to help it out?
Booking a flight/hotel is easy and safe, these are now matured sectors in travel. Travellers can quickly find the relevant information and do price comparison before booking.
But, when it comes booking an activity/experience online, it is very complicated. eOasia aims to ease this issue.
Tnooz view
The company has made a strong launch with about 1,000 activities across 12 countries.
A quick look at the stream of posts in eOasia's Facebook page would bring out the fact that the team was on the road for months to establish partnerships with suppliers across various destinations.
Interestingly, eOasia team has met every supplier they are working with, and personally approved every activity. A team of four in eOasia is constantly on the move to meet new suppliers.
For example, last year, one of eOasia team member spent two months in Vietnam, four in Bali, one in Java, two in Cambodia and three in Thailand. He has been travelling for about 1,080 hours in various modes of transport to meet suppliers - planes, boats, buses, scooters and rickshaws.
The company highlights this as one of its differentiating factors. While an effort like this certainly brings in credibility on the activity offered on site, the feasibility of travelling to various destinations in Asia to personally meet suppliers needs some thought too.
eOasia's website is inspiring to travel with large pictures in home page, and also in activity detail page. A neat and colorful website to look at, with a responsive design experience.
With the team's extensive effort in aggregating activities, very soon we can expect it to launch in more destinations with increased activity collection.
As the company rightly points out, tours and activities is a huge market in Asia with many suppliers operating in an unorganized fashion. Many new startups (for example - BeMyGuest, Voyagin, and Tourlandish) have emerged in recent times to make this industry organized. We believe many are still to emerge.
Vine video about Eoasia