GetOurGuide, a Singapore-based startup, helps users travelling to South East Asia with an itinerary preparation service by using social media.
The site recommends itineraries based on as user's social profile, and allows them to then add or edit their schedule.
For every destination in the itinerary, the site lists hotels, attractions, restaurants, shopping places, and live events. Users can pick items from this list and build their itinerary.
Users can also review or discuss with fellow travellers/social media friends about the itinerary, group travellers can take advantage of this feature, claims the company.
Currently, only hotel product in an itinerary can be booked (via Agoda).
GetOurGuide was founded by Budi Santoso (CEO) and Anton Rifco (CTO). The current team also consists of a programmer, and a designer. The startup is mentored by Brent Traidman, venture partner, at Fenox Venture Capital.
The founders started the company with their own capital. Recently, the company received about $40,000 from Action Community of Entrepreneurship (ACE) from Spring Singapore, and TURN8, the leading Middle Eastern accelerator, based in Dubai, UAE.
Q&A with Santoso below:
Tell us how you founded the company, why and what made you decide to jump in and create the business.
The idea to create this company came from my own experience when I visited Thailand for the first time. At that time, I was still working and did not really have much time to plan my holiday.
In addition to that, my friend who initially planned a trip with me, cancelled his trip at last minute. As a result, my trip wasn't exciting.
Inspired by this past experience, I started working on an idea to help travellers create better experiences. After a few changes on the idea, GetOurGuide evolved as a social collaboration platform that recommends South East Asia-focused travel itineraries based on user profiles and preferences.
GetOurGuide is very unique compared to other trip planning service, because, it focuses on the social aspect where travellers can collaborate with each other in real time by leveraging social media. They can even find other travellers who have similar profile/preferences, discuss with each other and then plan a trip together.
I sensed the opportunity in this segment, and with the help of Founder Institute Singapore and IdeasInc accelerator program, I decided to work on this project full-time with my business partner.
Estimation of market size?
Based on ASEAN Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2012, about 77 million international tourists visited South East Asian countries and they spent a total of $68 billion.
This number keeps growing every year by (approx) 7%, and in 2015, the number of international visitors is estimated at 110 million.
Competition?
There are many companies that have trip planning services such as Mygola and Tourist Eye, however, GetOurGuide offers something different compared to them. Also, we focus on a specific market - South East Asian countries.
We offer a real time collaboration platform and our travel matching algorithm creates a value unlike any other players.
By focusing on the social collaboration platform, we hope that we can create a community of travellers who help each other create better holidays.
Quoting our mentor, Traidman, about our service:
"There is a huge demand to make travel industry more social. It is surprising that no company has mastered the social aspect of tourism.
"GetOurGuide is solving this problem in Southeast Asia. Their proprietary technology recommends custom itineraries based on your needs, uses social media to extract and predict your favorable trips in one of the most exotic areas of the world.
"The founders of GetOurGuide are passionate entrepreneurs who are allowing travellers to share, for the first time, real time travel experiences among friends, family, and other travellers."
Revenue model and strategy for profitability?
Right now we are focusing on commission-able rates on hotels and tour activity bookings, as well as an advertising and sponsorship marketplace on our platform. We are also thinking of offering our API to other parties to create another revenue stream.
What problem does the business solve?
Travellers spend a lot of time planning an itinerary for their holiday. Today, travellers need to visit several resources to get valid information about destinations. Then, travellers still need to organize all gathered information to create a desirable itinerary.
This becomes a problem for travellers who have limited time or those who are frustrated with too much information from different resources.
For those interested in group travel, and those who want to enjoy a trip together, creating an itinerary can become a problem because there is no platform that helps them do this. Each person in the group may have different traveling ideas so that they need a platform to communicate this idea to their group, easily and efficiently.
Our motto is - "Travel planning should be as fun and easy possible."
We believe that travellers should enjoy the planning (journey), not just the trip (destination). And, that's why we created GetOurGuide to address this problem.
How did the initial idea evolve and were there changes/any pivots along the way in the early stages?
Initially, GetOurGuide was a platform to connect travellers and local people so that travellers can find their preferred local guide for their trip.
Later on, the idea evolved to become a platform where travellers can get itinerary recommendations, and then can ask local people to review their itinerary.
In this second version of GetOurGuide, we introduced two new features where travellers can collaborate together with other travellers in real time and also find a matching travel partner who has a similar profile or preference.
We hope that even before the trip begins, travellers can make new friends and share their knowledge to create the best possible itinerary.
Why should people or companies use the business?
First, if travellers want an easier way to plan their holiday, and more efficiently, they should use our platform.
Second, this platform is very useful for group travellers who want to collaborate in real time (any changes made to the plan will be notified to all group members) to plan their trip.
Third, if a person is travelling alone and want to find a travel partner, our algorithm will help find a suitable traveller based on his/her profile and preferences.
What is the strategy for raising awareness and the customer/user acquisition (apart from PR)?
Currently, our main strategy is to optimize the use of social media to create awareness about our platform.
We use almost all social media channels today, and will continue to use this as a primary demand generation platform.
We will create a Facebook app to help us acquire users. We are also working on partnerships with existing travel communities so that we can reach out to their members.
Where do you see the company in three years time and what specific challenges do you anticipate having to overcome?
In three years, we want to be the leading resource for travellers who want to plan, research and collaborate for their holiday in South East Asia.
We expect there will be many more players competing in this space, however, we believe that our solution will help us become the leading player in the future.
We also plan to launch our mobile app in the next few months.
What is wrong with the travel, tourism and hospitality industry that requires another startup to help it out?
The tourism industry is growing very fast. With constantly evolving technology, travellers’ lifestyle has also begun to change.
Travellers want to be "social" during their trips. They want to know what their friends are doing and also they want to experience the same trip as their friends. Because of this, travellers research a lot to plan their travel.
However, the current solution in travel industry only solves some parts of this problem. The tools available right now do not make it easy for travellers to plan their trip, also they do not allow many social/sharing opportunities for travellers to collaborate before and during the trip.
What other technology company would you consider yourselves most closely aligned to in terms of culture and style... and why?
We admire Tesla Motors for creating very innovative solutions in the transportation industry. We want to follow their spirit in creating innovative solutions to help travellers have better experiences.
Tnooz view
While the debate about trip planning is still on - whether it is broken or not - we have many new startups coming in this space in recent times, addressing more or less the same problem with different feature sets.
Though there are a number of companies in this space, there is no clear market leader yet, so that gives some scope for new entrants.
But, looking at the feature set and user interface of GetOurGuide, it is not very convincing to believe that it is solving something new that other players aren't. As a matter of fact, companies like uTrip and Mygola have far superior user interface, and much advanced features.
The unique aspect of GetOurGuide is its decision to focus on only one market - South East Asia - unlike other players that target global trip planning scenarios.
While this immediately reduces the user base for the product, there is still scope if the content is unique and rich, with a better user interface, and a real compelling reason for users to engage with the platform.
As with other travel planning startups, revenue generation (and scaling it) will be an interesting element to look out for.
6-second video about GetOurGuide