Startup Stage: Aloja wants to help tour and activity operators boost earnings

Aloja

A dynamic pricing tool for tours and activities that launches this month, Aloja uses machine learning and forecast demand to adjust prices daily, helping operators boost revenue. 

Aloja was founded by CEO Daniel Pino and chief technology officer Daniel Cabra, the team behind TourOpp, which was acquired by RocketRez in 2022.

What is your 30-second pitch to investors?

Aloja is the first AI-powered dynamic pricing platform purpose-built for tours, activities and attractions, built by the founders of TourOpp. Operators deal with real-time demand and limited capacity, yet most are still using static pricing or rule-based setups. We use machine learning to forecast demand and adjust prices daily, helping them increase revenue, boost conversion rates and improve the guest experience.

Describe both the business and technology aspects of your startup.

From a business standpoint, we integrate with the major reservation systems, so operators don’t have to change anything in their setup. We work with them to import historical transaction data and ensure they can set the guardrails they’re comfortable with—including which products to apply pricing to.

On the tech side, we’ve built machine learning models to forecast demand and optimize pricing based on trends like booking pace, booking windows, internal booking behavior, cross-product signals and broader market patterns.

Give us your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the company.

• Strengths: Founder knowledge and love for this industry, past experience building and integrating with current reservation technology and strong timing
• Weaknesses: Operator hesitancy around changing something as established as pricing
• Opportunities: A fragmented, underserved market that’s ready for smarter tools—and no clear category leader in dynamic pricing for experiences
• Threats: Confusion in the market, with some tools calling variable or rules-based pricing “dynamic pricing,” which can hurt trust and distort expectations

What are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate from both the customer and the industry perspectives?

• For operators: short booking windows, unpredictable demand, underpriced inventory and low website conversion rates 
• For guests: crowded peak times, no incentive to book in advance and limited price transparency

With dynamic pricing, we help both sides win—operators earn more, and guests benefit from price flexibility.

Now that the product is built, what’s your strategy for customer acquisition?

We’re leaning on our network, trade events and industry media. Between my co-founder and I, we’ve been selling into this market for years—and we know how they buy. We’ll also partner with leading reservation systems to reach operators directly through their marketplaces and integrations.

Tell us what process you've gone through to establish a genuine need for your company and the size of the addressable market.

Our former company, TourOpp, aimed to create an OTA for discounted empty spaces on tours and activities. At one point, we had over 120 operators across multiple continents signed up. Looking back, both we and they were trying to solve the same thing: how to maximize revenue from perishable inventory.

According to Arival, there are more than 1 million experience operators globally. We’re focused on the 50,000 who already use modern restechs and are ready to implement pricing tech.

How and when will you make money?

We’ll generate revenue through an SaaS model. Operators can choose between a fixed monthly fee or a usage-based tier, depending on what works best for them. We’re already receiving applications for our early access program, and we expect to start converting paying customers this year.

What are the backgrounds and previous achievements of the founding team?

My co-founder and I previously built TourOpp, which pivoted into a SaaS messaging platform that was later acquired by RocketRez. Before ChatGPT existed, we were already building NLP-powered chatbots to help operators boost revenue through upsells—and our product was used by operators across three continents.

How have you addressed diversity and inclusion within your business?

Both my co-founder and I are from Latin America, and we’ve always valued diversity—not just as a principle but as a strength. We’re building a remote-first company, and our first hire is also based in LATAM. From the start, we’ve made a conscious effort to seek out talent from underrepresented backgrounds in both travel and tech. We know this industry is global, and our team should reflect that.

What's been the most difficult part of founding the business so far?

Nailing the timing. We’ve had this idea in some form for years, but the market and the tech just weren’t ready. I still wouldn’t say everything is perfect—legacy systems are still a challenge—but building a product that’s both automated and intuitive enough for this audience has taken a lot of iteration.

Generally, travel startups face a tough time making an impact—why are you going to be one of the lucky ones?

Because we’re solving a real problem with a practical product that operators can test and see the ROI for themselves. If they don’t see value, they won’t use us—and that’s fair. But if they do, there’s no reason not to. And we know exactly how to reach them.

A year from now, what state do you think your startup will be in?

By next summer, we expect dynamic pricing to be live on hundreds of operator websites, with strong product-market fit and growing ARR. We’ll also be working across the full spectrum of this industry—tours, activities, attractions—with the integrations and reach to serve nearly anyone in the space.

What is your endgame? (Going public, acquisition, growing and staying private, etc.)

Too early to say. We’re building Aloja to be category-defining. Whether that means staying independent or becoming part of a larger ecosystem depends on what best serves our customers and our mission. For now, we’re focused on building long-term value—and doing it the right way.