TLabs Showcase focus on startups featuring Romania-based travel company Hotel Peeps.
Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?
Zitec.com is a Romanian software development company, focused mainly on providing outsourcing services. Our customers are mostly foreign (from US, Canada, Denmark, UK), but we also have important local customers.
International customers list includes: Mercedes Benz, J W Marriott, Amadeus International, Proventys, Polar Rose, Broadway.tv, PetManufacturers.com, Fitness Forward etc.
We are mostly dealing with LAMP applications, but we are also very experienced with cloud computing platforms (Amazon) and other languages, platforms and database systems.
Current Zitec team has around 35 full-timers: Zend-certified engineers, Zend framework engineers, ISQTB software testers, experienced project managers and graphic designers.
In 2009 we have invested $250,000 in Media Ventures, a US company that owns VideoPublishing.com. This year we have launched two Zitec-owned projects: Hotel Peeps and Sharoid.com.
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
Zitec has financed itself mainly by providing software development services for the past seven years.
What problem are you trying to solve?
Hotelpeeps.com is trying to address a common problem: finding best accomodation options when travelling.
We realised that when travelling to a new destination we tend to ask our friends if they've been there and if they have any recommendations. So we turned to Facebook and built our application around this social network.
Instead of reading thorough but anonymous (possibly fake) reviews on well known travel websites, people are usually looking for their friends experience because a friend's recommendation counts more.
Describe the business, core products and services?
Hotel Peeps is currently connected to seven booking engines (GTA, Travco, Hotelbeds, Tourico, Miki, Jacob and Restel) which provide us with the hotel database and booking mechanism required.
First of all, Hotel Peeps allows hotel browsing by location and friends recommendations, but also provides more social-oriented features: travel experience compatibility and travel wish compatibility.
These features will help friends organize their future trips better. Once a hotel is selected, prices and booking are easily available.
Who are your key customers and users at launch?
At the moment we only target Facebook users and we have focused on Romanian public (around 1.3 milion Facebook accounts so far) in order to validate our idea and execution.
We managed to get over 5,000 Facebook users after the first month. A recent phase started in May to push our Wishlist feature, accompanied by a new promo campaign.
Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?
We are actually looking for investors at the moment and will be participating very soon at some specialised events. We wanted first to build as much as possible, launch, then iterate based on user feedback and the things we learn.
We have a lot of upcoming features so we are looking for a partner to help us grow.
What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?
First of all we need to attract as many users as possible and take it worldwide, not only focus on Romanian users. We are very happy with the results of our Facebook campaigns and we think this can scale to achieve a solid core of power users to get the ball rolling.
The revenue model will be a mixed one:
- We will receive a commision fee for every hotel or airplane booking that originates from Hotelpeeps (affiliate style).
- We will promote specific hotels or travel packages to our users.
Since we do not have ever hotel in the world in our database, we were already being contacted by multiple hotels, interested in our project and willing to pay for regular ads. So going for a pay-for listing for not included hotels could also be an option.
If everything goes well, we could build a website outside Facebook (indeed, you never know what their app strategy will be in the future) and integrate with other social networks.
SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
Strengths:
- Very good planning and execution skills, understanding of social media, very good knowledge of tourism industry, solid partners.
Weaknesses:
- Limited experience with worldwide level online startups, especially marketing at this level. We’re totally dependent on Facebook at the moment and their shifty approach towards applications (methods Facebook applications are able to promote themselves have seriously been affected lately).
Opportunities:
- Current social-oriented travel experience applications have proven they can be succesfull, but we believe we can execute faster & better.
Threats:
- Not being able to retain the incoming users, fail to keep them coming back to the application, and therefore not achieving the critical mass needed to take off with an efficient marketing investment.
Who advised you your idea isn't going to be successful and why didn't you listen to them?Some people were skeptical that a booking order will ever originate from Facebook, as (they stated) FB is only seen as a place where "you grow your crops", a playground, nothing more.
While that is true for lots of people, we look at the FB users that are making best use of the social network to communicate with close friends and share their life experiences with them.
What is your success metric 12 months from now?
We would consider we are succesful if we manage to get at least 50,000 users from Romania alone & earn enough commisions to cover development and marketing costs of this first stage OR if we will find an investor that believes in our idea and will help us take it to the next level.
TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.