I was recently thinking (as a hypothetical exercise) about how families choose what day tours or activities to book whilst in a destination.
How would you handle it when you have children of different ages, who are interested in wildly different things, all spending a day with their parents in a foreign city?
Consider that the answer may be an app.
One child creates their list of tours and activities; a second child creates their own ideas; the parents have their preferences... all via their own devices.
Some algorithm/big data/black box within the app then determines what the family should do, and what they should do on subsequent days, fairly distributing the selections so that if child A was favoured once, child B would subsequently have their needs taken into consideration.
Argument solved!
At this point you can hear startup founders open up their ears and go "ooh, interesting idea" and reach for their excel spreadsheets and begin to map out costs, revenues (from bookings) and where they will find their seed capital.
Sadly, execution costs will probably make the proposal not particularly viable (although founders may only find this out about 18 months after launch, having pivoted three times).
Another way of looking at the idea/problem
Think of it this way:
What if we judged the success of this idea not on whether it can create a viable revenue stream from transactional revenue share, but instead judged the idea based on family arguments being solved (or prevented)?
There should be room for our industry to be more like art or music, where creativity and success is initially measured by human reaction and benefit, not the mighty dollar.
If somehow we could find a way of supporting services (that need money to be initially built and subsequently run), we would foster creativity that would revitalise the overall travel experience.
Not every travel app should need to be revenue generating to be considered a success.
Such a mindset and the opportunities that would flow from it would create a pathway for new travel startup entrepreneurs who would be able to be creative first without the burden of making a money making machine on day one.
Current routes for those in their twenties and looking to create a travel startup are very limited, which is one of the factors leading to the long line of poor outcomes.
Other non-financial measurements that we should consider as successful:
- Relax - how much a service was able to make someone relax / feel stress free - during a journey
- Local community benefit - can we start rewarding those who are working on keeping tourism responsible
- Knowledge and understanding - services that build knowledge or shared understanding are hard to monetise but we as humans should reward those who work on these problems as they are key to flourishing as a species.
Praise doesn't pay mortgages. So how should we keep a roof over their people's heads while being paid "in praise"?
Could investors invest in a person rather than a business?
For example, could they say, "we want to give you money to learn your sector, but if this fails, we want an agreed better deal on your next business" - immediately letting the founder know that their first business is for learning and experience, reducing a burden of expectation, but also letting the investor benefit from that learning that they invested in, for later.
Thoughts?
NB: Travel music image via Shutterstock.