These are exciting times in tours & activities with the segment attracting investor attention as well as a renewed focus from online travel giants such Booking Holdings and TripAdvisor.
Enter TourScanner which sees potential in aggregating the supply from many of the big players to create a single platform for tours.
Here's a clip from the company:
What problem does your business solve?
TourScanner provides travelers with an advanced one-stop solution to search and compare tours and travel activities by aggregating offers from all the largest online travel agencies, and making them easily accessible on a single platform. No other engine can provide the speed, choice and dynamic results for today’s travelers.
Travelers spend days and visit dozens of websites researching tours and travel activities; TourScanner will disrupt this saving them significant time and money.
Names of founders, their management roles, and number of full-time paid staff?
Simone Semprini, CEO, is leading the strategy and operations of the company. Joseph Dimucci, CTO, is in charge of the IT developments. Guillaume Picard, CMO, is taking care of the sales & marketing strategy. Giuseppe Lacerenza, CFO, is leading the finance function & investors relations. We have also several employees working on the marketing & IT developments.
Funding arrangements?
We have received angel funding. We are now seeking seed funding to speed up the development of our B2B tools. We have already met several investors in Europe and negotiations have started.
Revenue model?
We earn commissions for each successful completed booking made on our partner’s websites brought by clickthrough via TourScanner website.
Why do you think the pain point you’re solving is painful enough that customers are willing to pay for your solution?
The tours & activities market is booming. We have listed more than 30 websites specialized in this sector such as Viator, Klook or Tiqets to name a few.
Metasearch engines are becoming more and more popular in the travel sector as they allow travellers to save time and money. Travellers can search and compare different booking providers on one single platform and pay the best price. Flights and accommodation search have all experienced the boom of metasearch creating multi-billion industries, Tours are about to experience the same.
External validation
TourScanner has partnered with multiple leading OTAs amassing more than 300,000 tours and activities on its platform. More OTAs will be added especially in Asia and Australia to address the huge demand. TourScanner is incubated at
Startup Lisboa. In December 2017, the company was voted the most promising startup in the “Discoveries 2017 Edition”, an accelerator program organized by Fábrica de Startups in Lisbon, among 14 other finalists from all over the world.
tnooz view:
The acquisition of FareHarbour by Booking Holdings last week quickly followed by TripAdvisor's acquisition of Bokun put tours & activities firmly in the spotlight in recent weeks.
That fragmented industry with low technology penetration will get hopefully get a boost from those deals with the end result of getting more experiences online.
TourScanner sees opportunity in aggregating tours already online and available via major online travel players.
It's not the first time there has been a metasearch for the activities segment with Pocketvillage, now closed, promising something similar back in 2011. That company went down the B2B route quite quickly and that is also very much part of the strategy for TourScanner as well as its B2C status.
Perhaps now that the big players have their sights firmly on the in-destination segment once more coupled with mobile penetration rates, tours & activities will have its moment in the online world.
Related reading:
Tours and activities coming of age but still room for tantrums