Joobili, the Budapest-based and highly regarded travel startup, won the right to present at the European startup Seedcamp gig in London recently.
But despite being unsuccessful - as this blog post explains – their pitch makes for interesting viewing.
Take note of co-founder Jared Salter’s remarks on how to tackle the thorny issue of inspiration versus destination choice for online travel information suppliers.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDtULBUqn_M
Related posts:
Are you a online travel agency, tour operator, or traditional travel agency with responsibility for travel booking?
Direct, social media, offline retail, mobile web, mobile app, website et al – travellers can search and book products and engage with brains in more channels than ever before.
The business travel sector is embracing apps, mobile web, micro-management and virtual concierge systems – but what is the best strategy and how do you implement it?
Tnooz is lucky and privileged to have some of the brightest minds in the industry reporting and contributing to its service almost every single day of the year.
I like Joobili’s emphasis on “when” for inspiring travel. Seems like a great idea. Knowing when the last week is to view polar bears in Norway is cool, but the emphasis on festivals is not all that inspiring for me. How many of us want to attend festivals on our vacations or getaways? Some people obviously, but…
As Joobili builds out other time-sensitive parameters, I think it could be an inspiring idea.
@Kevin- Thanks for the post. Sorry the film quality isn’t the best. I’m cramming to send off my presentation for the EyeForTravel Sales and Marketing Summit in Prague next week, but when I have a moment I’ll upload the presentation to Slideshare.
@Dennis- We’ve always seen festivals and events as just a starting point. The real vision is using time as an entry point rather than destination. We believe this opens a lot of opportunities.
Agree with Dennis on the issue of festival focus for inspiration. Not only are these often a secondary motivator to visit a place, but in the case of a festival or event with a very large following, it might be difficult to obtain accommodation which defeats the purpose of the whole idea.
The inspiration focus is a welcome development among the trip planning ventures as it might lead people away from the almost exclusive price focus. A really great experience, based on personal preferences, combined with good value should be a more attractive proposition for many than just getting the lowest priced deal.
Most people seeking inspiration look for WHERE/WHAT TO DO first, then (or alongside) WHEN.
The Joobili homepage assumes the user is totally clueless as to what region of the world or event/activity category they want. That is usually not the case.
The homepage focus on WHEN does in fact make it less useful than other sites that correctly assume that visitors often DO have preferences/know what category of activity/event they want.
The search section with multiple options (destination, category, keyword) should be on the homepage.
WHEN is not a differentiator. Most activity/event/tour listing sites let people filter by date. It’s a bog standard feature. Differentiate by being useful.
Pretty design.
If you are an inspiration site, rather than a destination-based site or booking site (when ‘where’ is already decided), then the two points of entry are when and what. People know when they can travel, and roughly what sort of holiday they want – culture, city break, beach, whatever. What they are open to is where. The inspiration wesbite that wins will be the one that can seamlessly and intuitively answer the question that travel agents get all the time over the phone ‘I’ve got two weeks in October and I want to go somewhere hot with a beach and a bit of culture, but no more than 4 hours flight time way – oh, and under 500 quid’…
One further comment after viewing the presentation – I admire Jared and I love Joobili and what it is trying to do, but the telling question at the end from Jared was asking for ideas from mentors about how to monetise the site. I had thought that the days of launching travel websites with no firm ideas of how to monetise were over. I guess not!
@james Thanks for your support and kind words. You are right about the days of launching a site without a plan for monetizing are long gone. Seedcamp investors would’ve never selected Joobili as a finalist if we did not have a solid plan for making money. The question I ask at the end of my presentation was more about tactical details rather than the overall monetization strategy. That said, even with a solid monetization strategy it would be foolish for us to not ask for additional advice from the collection of top European entrepreneurs that Seedcamp pulled together. There was a closed-door presentation later in the week where finances and monetization were presented in detail.