TripsCommerce wants to provide tour operators, small accommodation owners, activity suppliers and other travel companies with the technology they need to trade online.
It describes itself as an "operating system" for online travel offering website design templates, reservations technology and the ability to accept payments.
Here's the pitch:
Q&A with Daniel Dangal:
What problem does your business solve?
Setup travel booking website in minutes. Shopping cart for time-based travel products with easily customizable website themes and integrated guest relations and operations management in the cloud.
Our Software as a Service-based system lets travel operators establish their business online in minutes without any need for designers or programmers.
They can start taking orders, receive instant payments, automate time based product inventory, manage day-to-day operations and present a seamless web and mobile experience with fully customizable templates all in one platform.
TripsCommerce simplifies the technology for small tourism operators, accommodation providers and mom and pop bed & breakfast owners by providing an end-to-end solution for centralized bookings, distribution and operation management.
Names of founders, their management roles, and number of full-time paid staff?
Daniel Dangal, responsible for product design and business development, Manoj Khatri, responsible for front-end development and Puspa Joshi in charge of backend development.
Funding arrangements?
We have been self-funded till now, we are looking to raise funds in the future for our growth and development.
Revenue model?
Our business model is simple - monthly subscription plans with varying features sets. The plans start at $50, $100 and $150 per month, each plan is based on type of products, number of administrative staff, disk space allocation, number of domain names per account.
Why do you think the pain point you’re solving is painful enough that customers are willing to pay for your solution?
Setting up an online travel business website is not that easy.
Our SaaS based system enables small travel business owners’ setup an online travel store within minutes without the high costs and the need for programmers or designers.
It’s that easy, just select a theme and with our Theme Config* each part of the website can be customized; header, banner wall, body, sidebar, footer, you name it.
External validation?
The idea behind TripsCommerce won third place in Florida Atlantic University (FAU) Business plan competition 2015.
Founders combine over three decades of experience in ecommerce technology development and one of the founders has been working in the travel & tourism industry for more than five years.
Tnooz view:
Every market or region probably has a handful of these companies who can take care of the end-to-end tech side of things and enable businesses to get an online presence quickly. TripsCommerce says within 15 minutes.
The startup has an easy-to-grasp revenue model with simple pricing structure depending on what features a travel company wants to include.
The premise is that a small tour operator or accommodation owner should be concentrating on what they do best and not worrying about the technology.
Challenges for this company will be getting the word out about its services and achieving scale.
This business will most likely see slow steady growth as it brings more businesses on board as opposed to any rapid ramping up of its service.
Lots of the players it is targeting will be cautious about signing up to this sort of service, torn between the all important online presence and continuing to do things manually.