TLabs Showcase on travel startups featuring UK-based TravelLocal, an online travel agency to bring travellers and local companies together.
Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?
Travellocal is an online travel agency that connects travellers with DMCs/tour operators based within the destinations they’re travelling to.
Travellers are able to design a trip with the assistance of local tour operators, compare quotes from different operators and select the one that best matches their interests and budgets.
There are two of us at the moment running travellocal, with extensive experience in the tailormade tour operator sector in the UK and also at a DMC in Southeast Asia.
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
We’re self-funded for now, with some help from friends and family as well.
What problem are you trying to solve?
From our experience we know many travellers want to book with local tour operators based in their destination – these companies are the real destination experts, and provide great value, as well as being locally-owned – but are neither sure of their quality or how to pay them safely.
To give you an idea of how we solve these problems:
- We bond all transactions through the TTA (Travel Trust Association)
- Using our experience and contacts we handpick all local tour operators on the site to ensure quality
- We limit the number of companies that appear on the site and hope to act as a trustmark for those that do
- Behind the scenes we monitor every enquiry and advise and assist our local partners to ensure trip quality
- We allow travellers to compare between different DMCs, based on price, service etc.
- We accept credit and debit card payments online
Describe the business, core products and services?Travellocal’s core product is twofold: for travellers we provide a way to find, contact and safely pay locally owned in-destination tour operators.
For local tour operators we offer access to our customers and also our partnership and assistance in ensuring all trips go smoothly.
We wanted to work with locally-owned companies because when we worked in Southeast Asia for a local DMC we were often competing with foreign-owned DMCs, who made their money and simply repatriated it.
When travellers understand this, they usually choose locally-owned DMCs instead.
Who are your key customers and users at launch?
Initially we’re targeting DINKS and young families, career-break professionals and expatriates, however the range of potential users is wide.
Anyone who is reasonably web-savvy, interested in travel and looking for a price and expertise advantage will find the site of use.
Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?
We always knew there was demand from the DMC side. At the DMC where we worked in Southeast Asia there were regular occurrences of customers wanting to pay by credit card or wanting to bond transactions but not being able to.
We also had lots of comments from friends and family members, and many of their ideas are incorporated into the site.
We did user testing, which helped us sharpen our booking flow, and our local tour operator partners all had interesting ideas and feedback that shaped our concept.
What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?
The revenue model is commission-based (we take a small commission on each booking).
Broadly the strategy is to become a go-to website for tailormade travellers from anywhere in the world and to build a repeat client database through great feedback. More countries and regions will be added in time.
SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
Strengths:
- We have years of experience with tailormade clients and within the travel industry.
- We understand the local tour operator marketplace and have excellent contacts there
- We’re not merely a collection of webpages. We both sold and managed tailormade trips for many years so we know how great trips are created and operated on the ground.
- We bond everything – not a widespread phenomenon in the online travel world
- We accept credit and debit card payments
- We are not reliant on massive scaling up, and can do well within a niche, though we have bigger plans in the long term
Weaknesses:
- Lack of tech knowledge and skills. We’re getting there, but it’s a slog.
- The perennial start-up problem, lack of funds.
- Business model and USP are clunky to communicate (see our tagline, for example: "design, compare and book your trip with locally owned travel companies worldwide")
Opportunities:
- Customers always want value, but the financial crisis has sharpened minds. We have a great value proposition, but need to communicate it.
- We don’t see why the concept cannot move into group tours as well.
- We have our eyes on how the tailormade market will develop – there are many variations that are possible.
- We are experienced in product creation too, so will be feeding back to our local suppliers any ideas we, or our customers, have in order to help them increase their range of unique and distinctive products. We can also react to feedback from our partners, many of whom have been in the business a long time.
Threats:
- Competition is an ever-present threat.
- If online payments become a lot more economical for suppliers then that may affect us.
Who advised you your idea isn't going to be successful and why didn't you listen to them?Nobody said it wouldn’t succeed, but being from the UK you do get comments "admiring your bravery", which amounts to the same thing.
But in general the feedback we have had has been really positive, and our booking numbers are ahead of projections.
What is your success metric 12 months from now?
NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.