TLabs Showcase on travel startups featuring US-based VoLuNiUm, a new online travel agency for hotels that calculates results using deals, location, amenities and reviews.
Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?
The driving force behind VoLuNiUm is Jeff Shaw, a 20-year veteran of the hotel industry who wants to simplify the way we search for hotels.
Along the way, Jeff formed a technology partnership with Bump Networks Inc - Bump's work showcases the emerging push for simplified technology and integrated user experience on a personal level.
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
Volunium's start up costs were funded through a personal investment.
What problem are you trying to solve?
At Volunium we are solving quite a few problems. Online travel agencies are too complicated, landing pages are cluttered with deals and advertisements and results are often sponsored or too convoluted.
We cut through all of the clutter and simply provide customers with the best hotel options within three price categories.
Describe the business, core products and services?
Volunium is an online travel agency specific to hotels. Instead of providing an overwhelming amount of results and then forcing the customer to sort them based on their preferences, we apply a proprietary algorithm to the search to give the best results.
Some factors that weigh on the algorithm are:
- Online Customer Reviews
- Availability
- Geographic Location and/or Proximity
- Hotel Amenities
- Nightly Room Rates
- Star Ranking
- Percentages off of the Rack Room Rate
We believe that every consumer is looking for the same thing: The right hotel with the right room, at the right rate, with the right amenities, in the right location with the right level of service.
We simply came up with a formula that helps them make the right decision.
Who are your key customers and users at launch?
We are targeting consumers who like a simpler model and who don't like on-line advertising, cluttered and busy pages or sponsored results.
Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?
Based on data provided by our technology partner, Bump Networks, and their experience with emerging web trends and online travel sites that they’ve developed, we had enough consumer feedback to validate the concept prior to development.
What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?
Revenue models for Volunium are currently based on commissions from hotels for each booking.
Maintaining low overhead while focusing on organic and pay-per click advertising is going to drive profitability.
SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
Strengths:
- Our business model is simple and our results are simple, which is attractive to a large demographic. Page design is fresh and unlike any other online travel agency out there.
Weaknesses:
- We are working on increasing loading time for the results. This is sometimes slow due to all of the different equations within the algorithm running in the background to offer smarter results.
Opportunities:
- We are looking forward to building applications for mobile phones and tablets.
Threats:
- Our biggest threat is stiff competitor brand recognition with vast marketing resources.
Who advised you your idea isn't going to be successful and why didn't you listen to them?Some colleagues in the hotel industry were pessimistic, but we felt that their judgement was clouded by the inherit tension between properties and OTAs.
Hoteliers can be a proud group of people and often feel that their property or brand is special and deserving of loyalty.
We feel that this is true in some instances, but usually the general population doesn't see a difference. In many cities, there is a Hilton, a Sheraton and an Omni hotel within two blocks of each other and let's be honest, would you be able to tell the difference if they took down the signage?
Volunium is designed to help consumers simply differentiate between hotels and make the right choice.
What is your success metric 12 months from now?
We look forward to having a steady revenue stream that grows on a monthly basis, pays down start up costs and funds the future development of mobile apps.
NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.