It is natural for entrepreneurs new to the travel industry to focus on solving consumer problems or pain points.
Solving problems is what entrepreneurs are guided to do and consumer-facing issues are easy to spot and often look ripe for addressing.
Hence we end up with a glut of inspiration websites, social media services or product review aggregators.
Whilst there is certainly an opportunity in these sectors (for the ultimate few who capture sufficient traction to become category winners) it is becoming an increasingly obvious that sites such as inspiration websites are really focussed on web traffic arbitrage between Google and travel product suppliers and are not really winning the battle to become the place to start trip planning research.
That is not a plan for long term success.
Instead, I propose three problems that are crying out for help.
Idea #1 - the easy one suitable for bootstrappers: Tour operator/travel agent discovery
I work with specialist tour operators through our reservation system TourCMS as well as via the SmallFishBigOcean forums.
These tour operators tend to have great products not available via any distribution channel and their marketing can be limited to spending a few dollars on Google and other direct approaches.
Historically they have never worked with travel agents but now they are beginning to think about agent distribution or perhaps dipping their toes in affiliate marketing.
However, they struggle to find agents/affiliates interested or sufficiently knowledgeable in what they are promoting.
In just the last couple of weeks I have been asked who might promote a one month residential yoga teacher training course in India, tours of Ethiopia, mainstream tours of South Africa or walking holidays on the Isle of Wight (UK).
The problem exists in reverse. Conventional agents want to find tour operators/activity providers who have commissionable products that are credible, provide date, price and availability information in a nicely consumable format and who might be worth promoting to their consumers in their geographic vicinity.
Their current method to find new suppliers is exhibitions such as London's World Travel Market, ITB in Berlin, etc.
There is no web based solution for this right now.
Solution: A central website much like a dating website.
Idea #2 - for a company with a bit of money behind them: Tour operator commission/balance payments system
IATA runs a Billing Settlement Plan (BSP) for airlines, which it describes as:
"A BSP is the central point through which data and funds flow between travel agents and airlines. Instead of every agent having an individual relationship with each airline, all of the information is consolidated through the BSP"
Now the industry could do with that for tours operators/activity companies and travel agents.
However it needs to not just handle balance payments but also affiliate commission (i.e. companies working on the media model). Note that affiliate commission flows in the opposite direction to travel agent balance payments.
There is no web-based (or non web-based for that matter) solution for this right now.
Idea #3 - a toughie, but with the right contacts and partnerships you could be onto a winner: Credit card risk data
Credit card companies are happy to be informed when you are travelling abroad in order to incorporate this information within their risk analysis profiles.
Then, when you are based in the US but suddenly start charging payments from Thailand, the card company may permit the payment.
There are all sorts of problems with card company traveller profiles. For example, some card companies can only hold one trip at a time, causing problems to travellers on a multi-country trip.
I am less confident about this idea than the first two (because I have never worked for a credit card company), however, I sense they would pay for a source of traveller data which helps them mitigate payment risk and understand whether to accept a particular payment or not.
Might be worth looking into if you have the right contacts OR it might be left for a TripCase/TripIt type company to work towards.
NB: Thats it! Do you have any more suggestions on problems that could be addressed by travel industry entrepreneurs?