TLabs Showcase on travel startups featuring US-based destination tours and activities marketplace Vayable.
Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?
We are Jamie Wong and Samrat Jeyaprakash. We’re both multi-lingual, avid travellers.
Jamie previously worked for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and consulted for tech companies as a writer and strategist.
Sam previously built a social network for travel and led the technology team at cancerquest.org.
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
We’ve bootstrapped the business with modest savings from previous jobs.
What problem are you trying to solve?
We are trying to solve the "what to do when we get there" travel conundrum.
Right now people are spending an average of 29 days and visiting 22 sites to plan a single trip. And on average people take 3-4 leisure trips a year. This is a lot of precious time spent figuring out where to go and what to do!
We want help people take great trips by offering unique experience and activities that people can book in advance, the way they would a flight or hotel, by making it easy, fun and safe.
Describe the business, core products and services?
Vayable is a community marketplace where people can discover, buy and sell unique travel experiences. Local experts - those who sell experiences - can be individuals or independent businesses.
We currently do not support commercial tour companies or franchises.
Travellers coming to our site can be assured that they’re booking unique, authentic experiences offered by locals who care about giving travellers a safe, fun and authentic local experience.
By providing a peer-to-peer marketplace we are also helping to redirect tourist revenues back to small businesses and local communities, which in turn help sustain the very destinations that attract travellers.
This model also opens up a market previously restricted to tour operators by providing individuals and small businesses with a platform to offer services to travellers hungry for them.
Some have described us as an AirBNB meets Kiva for travel, which closely hits the mark of what we do.
Who are your key customers and users at launch?
We are targeting savvy and curious travellers who are seeking more out of their travel experiences than double-decker buses, duck tours and generic "city passes".
Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?
Yes. Our users on both sides of the marketplace are growing, as are transactions before we’ve even sought funding.
What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?
We collect a 3% processing fee from travellers and take a 15% commission fee from local experts for each transaction that goes through our site. Users on both sides have been satisfied with this model.
SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
Strengths:
- We have designed the site with our users in mind: our inventory is based on specific traveller requests as well as the experiences locals want to offer. The interface is intuitive, clean and reflects the curious, fun and savvy attitudes of our users.
Weaknesses:
- Like most start-ups, we have limited time and resources to build everything users want at the rate they want them.
Opportunities:
- The travel experience and activity market is now the fastest growing segment of leisure travel, representing $26.7 billion in annual revenue, and yet no one has solved the discovery and booking problem for these activities. We believe we are finally providing a large segment of independent travellers with a discovering and booking experience that finally eases their pain and can claim a meaningful portion of the market.
Threats:
- Existing tour aggregators who have already claimed a significant stake in the market (though it’s a fragmented space that necessitates multiple players).
Who advised you your idea isn't going to be successful and why didn't you listen to them?Everyone so far sees the huge potential for this idea and has been able to personally relate to the problem we’re trying to solve.
Some have questioned how we will be able to distinguish ourselves from existing players and our answer is that there is ample room in the space for someone to do this better, and we have several tricks up on sleeves (including the inventory, usability, design and community you already see on the site) that has and will continue to further distinguish us.
What is your success metric 12 months from now?
We want to see the numbers of travellers discovering and booking travel experiences on the site to continue to grow and that the site continues to make the lives of travellers and local experts better.
NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.