TLabs Showcase on travel startups featuring US-based Airport Chatter, a new community and guide service for airport users.
Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?
Airport Chatter is founded by:
- Mark Wagner: Age 22, Product and Strategy background, passionate about aviation.
- Izzy Kirsh: Age 21, Web designer and front-end engineer, founder of Pixelade.
Our mission is to make a travel community that is paving a path to make airports easier to navigate and less stressful.
We are launching our version one as a foundation for our future iterations. Version 1 is a web application that provides amazing profiles for 52 of the busiest airports in the United States along with venue profiles for all their eateries, shops, services and lounges.
With over 6,000 venue profiles, we are providing an easy way to discover what you are looking for whether it’s a specific bar post security or the closest ATM machine to your gate.
Our goal is to turn Airport Chatter into a community, we have added a review layer to airports and their venues, this allows you to share your tips and tricks and be informed by other travellers on the go.
Key pointers:
- We’re making airports smaller, easier to navigate.
- Helping travelers discovering new venues.
- Adding social layers to airports.
- The ability to Rate and Review airports and everything within.
- Community of travel enthusiasts.
- Tips and tricks from fellow air travelers.
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
We are fully bootstrapped – Airport Chatter is self funded.
What problem are you trying to solve?
Airport Chatter is paving the way for an easy airport experience; our version 1 provides airport venue discovery and easy airport navigation. We are building a community around airports that will make way for easier airport travel.
Describe the business, core products and services?
We are launching our Version 1 with 52 of the busiest airports in the United States.
Part of our Version 1 covers all the eateries, shops, lounges and services which equates to over 6000 venues at our launch.
We will be promoting the community to rate and review airports and their venues; there are many tips and tricks that fellow travellers can share that will make your airport experience better!
We have great roadmap planned and for that you can check out http://airportchatter.com/The-Future/ make sure to reserve your username!
Who are your key customers and users at launch?
Frequent flyers and business travellers.
Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?
Yes, we tested out a very early version.
What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?
Key advertising partnerships with airport venues and a revenue share model with service providers such as ground transportation (limos, shuttles and car rental), airport parking and airport hotels.
SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
Strengths:
- Airports are messy and it’s a low-competitive space, it’s in our power to fix them.
Weaknesses:
- We are dealing with a large data set and we need to make sure to constantly monitor for changes and updates.
Opportunities:
- The airport space has not been revolutionized which leaves room for us to act upon certain key areas that we think we can dominate.
Threats:
- New entrants, existing competition that may be completely aligned with our vision.
Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?
No one, but we’re prepared for that, we will keep moving ahead because we have validated our model and the responses we have been getting are awesome!
What is your success metric 12 months from now?
60,000 registered users
NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.
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About Kevin May
“Version 1 is a web application”. Hopefully you are getting the mobile version out the door asap. A location-aware app would be great for this.
Hey Gath, thanks for the feedback! You are 100% right, and we are working on mobile. The more feedback the better, keep it coming
There is a complete dearth of information on this Website. It’s basically worthless.
Hey Dick, Thanks for commenting. What type of information are you expecting to see? I’m sure you realize that this is our foundation which we will be building upon, it would be great to get some more information in regard to what content would make Airport Chatter useful for you.
Cheers!