MeetOnCruise is a US-based cruise trip social network, which first featured on Tnooz in June 2010 [TLabs Showcase - MeetOnCruise].
So what happened in the intervening 12 months?
Are you making money yet?
No. While we can turn on advertising today and bring in some revenue, our traffic and user base is not large enough – ie. it won't be a significant amount of revenue. So, we're focused on improving the product every day and increasing usage.
What has been the biggest problem - building the product/service or marketing it to consumers/travel industry?
Clearly, we underestimated the marketing effort. While the product build was challenging, it was what we expected and were more prepared for.
Reaching the core set of cruise consumers to make them aware of the service has been challenging.
However, once consumers are on our site, our conversion rate is fairly good.
Biggest assumption in the business plan that was wrong?
The time/effort to get through the chicken and egg problem. We knew as a social network/community that we needed a base of consumers before others found the service valuable.
We simply underestimated how much time this would take.
Is your current customer base as predicted?
We have over 2,000 registered members on the site. It's a start, but no, it has not met our expectations.
We recently launched our iPhone app (July 20th) and the stats are encouraging. Both conversions and engagement with our app are about 2x what we've seen on the website.
We plan on investing more to build out our mobile app. If you haven't yet, you should download the app!
Did you achieve your 12 month goals? If not, why not?
Our original goal was steady traffic of 100,000 visitors a month at the end of year ONE – which we are not close to.
Lots of reasons – here are the top two:
- Initial build of the product was too broad. We should have cut scope and gotten to market earlier with a more focused product
- Not enough investment in customer acquisition right from the start (SEO, email marketing, PPC, etc.)
Has the problem you were trying to solve changed?No, cruising remains a complex product and folks will continue to turn to online resources to help figure out which cruises are best for them and meet others that enjoy cruising.
We've broadened our approach from "an easy way to meet others on your cruise" to "an online platform for cruise consumers to interact before, during and after their cruise".
The roll calls are a part of this (before the cruise) but our mission is to build an online community around the lifecycle of planning, buying, taking and reviewing the entire cruise experience.
Which startup that has launched in the past 12 months did you think "Ah, wish we had done that!"?
We discussed but did not launch a "Groupon for cruises". This opportunity is still there to leverage group buying to fill the empty cabins on large ships.
If you could go back in time and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?
Launch early, talk to customers (a lot), relaunch...and repeat again, and again and again.
NB: Tnooz launched TLab Showcase in March 2010, a dedicated channel to give startups in the travel, tourism and hospitality sector an opportunity to explain their vision, company background and strategy to a wider audience.
As well as publishing an elevator pitch-type questionnaire for each business, Tnooz committed to following up with each startup after 12 months or so to see how well (or not) each performed.
NB2: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.