There is one thing those “Ten secrets for a successful startup” articles never mention – the critical business need for a fuzzy shark suit.

Who could have predicted that a costume purchase would spark a burgeoning embrace of social video for marketing and PR at TravelShark?

Even if you don’t have a college-football-quality mascot, and whether you’re a scrappy travel startup or an iconic hotel, here are nine signs it’s time for your company to dive in:

1. You own a fuzzy shark suit, or its metaphorical equivalent

Last June we changed our name from Swiftrank to TravelShark. The inspiration to create a company mascot named Mako Mark and make him our video leading man seemed nearly inevitable.

We binned our plan for a standard press release and instead shot a playful Shark-on-the-Street newsreel outside our office, capturing opinions from the hot dog guy and our mailman. Total spend for the video press release and a few shorts: under $10,000.

The videos made a huge splash in social media, exceeding every expectation, with traffic spikes, thousands of views, Twitter traction, and incoming sales leads. Did we celebrate when we got the news that we won a Gold Adrian Award for this grassroots campaign? You bet we did.

2. You are marketing something with a visual “story”

Video conveys visual and emotional touch points, which are present in almost every travel offering.

Our case and point. Last week we launched TravelSharkPix, a social travel-photo sharing service. We added a charitable component and asked users to help us pick three charity partners.

Cause marketing plus photography made video PR a natural choice. Our tongue-in-cheek launch video shows Mako Mark’s foiled attempts to find a partner.

Over the next week, we are releasing short follow-on charity stories like this one shown first at Tnooz today:

3. You can defuse the “Honey Badger” cynics in your office

I see fear about using video. You pitch an idea, and you get the “this is no Honey Badger” backlash. Instead of comparing your concept to one of the most popular viral videos ever, compare it to your other alternatives.

If your other option is a staid media release with a few photos, you don’t need blockbuster badger stats to score a win.

4. You want to reach consumers

C’mon. You know this one. YouTube is the second largest search engine. Facebook is clocking billions of video views each month.

If you are marketing a travel business to consumers, it likely has a visual story. Video is a must.

5. You want to reach forward-thinking travel executives

You know who they are. Tieless conference-goers mobbed with groupies. You take notes when they talk. They are the new media thought leaders in travel, and if they can influence your customers (or they are your customers), reach them with every arrow in your social media quiver, including social video.

6. You still care about SEO

If in the post-Panda era, you still work at reaching incremental customers through organic search, the YouTube-Google nexus means video matters.

Don’t miss out.

7. You’re allowed to wade in the perfect-is-the-enemy-of-the-good waters

Viral video marketing and PR success rests a great deal on something you can’t control: luck. It’s tough to predict virality, and so don’t break the bank (money or time) on any one video because our best-laid ideas may fall flat.

If your company allows experimentation and testing of “good” ideas, this is your game. If brand standards make “good” not good enough, you’ll spend too much money and time for the likely ROI.

8. You want to get the viral ball rolling with your staff

All those folks in your office may work for you, but if you want them to pull a social media oar, you need to inspire them.
Here’s the math:

Number of employees x (250 Facebook friends + 150 LinkedIn/Twitter) = WOW!

Impressive numbers, but your team members will only advocate for company initiatives on their social graphs if you give them material their friends will love.

A dull industry release is a cul-de-sac. Highly visual video that tells a compelling story – “Check out our new hotel in Da Nang! Let’s go!” – is great fodder for all-company engagement to get that social ball rolling.

9. Your employees aren’t having any fun

Sign out of your email for a minute. Walk around the office and check out the creative energy. Is anyone laughing? Our companies all have stories.

Stories build emotional glue. Videos are a great way to tell those stories, and your people will love being involved in planning, shooting, and giving feedback.

Ask yourself: “What’s my company’s shark suit?”

Armed with that answer, make your iconic story a video star!

NB: This is a guest article by Sue Heilbronner, CEO of TravelShark.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Guestmob is a next generation opaque hotel booking system that uses big data, social data and predictive analytics to re-invent the model pioneered by Priceline/Hotwire.

Our company was formed over a year ago by Yann Ngongang, CEO (former-CEO, eSmog – Partner, Mercer/Microsoft, Bell Labs,other startups, Stanford MBA); Alan Kaiser, CTO (former Chief Architect, Liberate Technologies, other startups, PhD/CS), Damien Keller, Director Hotel Ops (Dir of Sales, Joie de Vivre group)

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

We raised a seed round last summer from Eric Chen (co-founder Tinyprints, investor Palantir), Fabrice Grinda (CEO, OLX), Jose Marin (Chairman ViajaNet, investor eDreams), Ron Rofe, Vaizra fund (vkonkatke.com/facebook of Russia), Joe Lonsdale (co-founder, Palantir), and many others.

What problem are you trying to solve?

For consumers, we offer a much more flexible opaque booking solution. Guests know exactly what hotels they’re getting, and our bookings are refundable: no secret hotel, no bidding, no gimmick!

Our prices are lower than published rates by up to 50%: we track and show the numbers. For hotels, in addition to helping with yield management/filling empty rooms, we solve a timing problem around discounts.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Guestmob core innovation lies in the concept of hotel collections, coupled with a magic pricing algorithm.

Our team spends hours reviewing & curating hotels into collections of 4-8hotels of the same class/location/ratings – we tend to eliminate 30-50% of hotels based on quality.

Then our pricing engine uses an adaptive algorithm to determine day by day the appropriate discounted price at which we will accept booking and guarantee customers a room at one of the hotels in the collection.

These prices tend to be 20-50% lower than the published prices of any hotel in the collection.

The pricing system anticipates the level of discount we are to get from hotels during our regular mob auctions.
Sometimes, we loose money on these transactions, but we guarantee our guests a booking at one of the hotels in the collection.

We see our company as a pricing technology company, as we’re applying the supply & demand science from airlines to hotels. But we do not sell cheap rooms.

We focus on building quality baskets of hotels and optimize for price within these baskets.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

At a top level, we are going after hotel shoppers with a little flexibility on hotel choices. We serve value-driven customers, but we remove all the friction points of current opaque sites: non-refundable bookings, secret hotels, last minute mobile only, complex bidding.

We’re still learning exactly who that customer profile is.

But based on our initial launch in San Francisco this past fall, lots of people loved our offerings and they tended to book longer stays, well in advance, and were more methodical about finding discounts because they were booking more room-nights.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

We spent lots of time surveying & talking to prior customers of companies like Hotwire & Priceline, lots of time talking to major hotel managers and investors to also understand how to position ourselves effectively for them.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

We have a traditional merchant model where our revenue is the delta between the discounted price we get from customers, and the mob price we pay to hotels after auctions.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Experienced startup guys
• Strong technology
• Disruptive model

Weaknesses:

• Team needs to be rounded up
• Team’s ability to scale fast
• Potential complexity of our system for consumers

Opportunities:

• Big data
• Social data and machine learning
• Consumers becoming savvy

Threats:

• Traditional online travel agencies (OTA) expanding their opaque-type models such as the Expedia-Groupon partnership

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

Some experienced OTA executives were most skeptical of our model, especially those that fought the battles of the past 10years.

While we have to simplify, simplify, simplify, we stayed the course because our platform brings significant/measurable benefits to consumers, as well as hoteliers.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

In a year, we will continue to grow rapidly, and will not limit ourselves to the US market.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

The Australia-based site launched in December 2010 [TLabs Showcase - TraceMyTrip] with a promise of a platform where users can book trips, store photos, video and journals, and create maps.

Within its first four months, founder Ryan Adams was claiming 1.5 million people had registered to use the service after the company had secured a “small private investment” to fund the startup alongside his own personal capital.

At first glance, TraceMyTrip had a business model – using what it called a geo-located pay-per-click ad platform as well as a plan to launch a subscription fee for some services in the future.

Within its first year Adams was hoping the site would reach six million active users around the globe.

However, something appears to have gone wrong as the site is currently inactive and redirects to an affiliate link-laden holding page – with the URL apparently no longer registered and now available to buy.

Adams hasn’t tweeted since June 2011 and the official TraceMyTrip Twitter account last posted a message the month before to announce its up-time had returned.

The site was taken down shortly after the TLabs Showcase article in April last year when a number of people questioned the veracity of the claim to have 1.5 million users register for the service.

Adams claimed at the time that the site had been the victim of a hacking attempt.

It is difficult to determine when the site was eventually pulled down completely and when the URL was handed back to a domain registration service.

Strangely, none of the 1.5 million registered users took to the social media airwaves to lodge their dismay at the end of the service.

NB: All reasonable effort was made to contact Adams to discover more about the fate of TraceMyTrip, but no response was forthcoming.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Travelomy is a South Asia-focused travel portal that was launched in June 2011. The parent company behind Travelomy is Ciafo, which also has two other consumer web products.

The key team behind Travelomy consists of TWO people – Gurjit Sidhu and Amarpreet Kalkat, who are also co-founders of parent company Ciafo.

• Gurjit Sidhu handles engineering for Travelomy. He is a business grad who is a developer at heart. Sidhu has spent almost ten years working at companies like Cap Gemini, Trilogy or doing multiple entrepreneurial activities. He has coded Travelomy almost single-handedly. Sidhu holds an MBA from the prestigious IIM Calcutta and a B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from Thapar University, Patiala, India.
• Amarpreet Kalkat handles the product and business for Travelomy. Kalkat has spent almost ten years building internet products at companies like HP, Trilogy and Nokia before co-founding Ciafo. While he still dabbles in coding a bit, his core strength is in architecting and designing products that solve people’s problems in a simple and smart way. Kalkat holds an MBA from the prestigious IIM Kozhikode and a B.Tech. in Computer Science from Punjabi University, Patiala, India.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

Travelomy is currently bootstrapped by the co-founders and has not raised any funding yet.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Existing travel experience online is fragmented. There are travel guides that are primarily content plays, booking sites that are primarily pricing plays and half-successful social efforts in between to bridge the gap and build a wholesome experience.

Travelomy wants to build an online home for travellers leveraging social engagement and collaboration, which brings all of the thing mentioned above together in a sublime way.

While Travelomy is initially starting with South Asia, the ultimate aim is to build a global travel portal.

Describe the business, core products and services?

While Travelomy ultimately aims to be a comprehensive travel portal providing services that help in planning to booking to undertaking the trip, it is currently focused on the first phase, trying to build’s the world’s best travel guide.

Travelomy focuses on three key aspects – rich content, geo-location and social media – and uses them effectively to build a useful information source for a traveller.

Travelomy also differentiates itself in the way it collects and presents information. Almost all of the content on Travelomy is crowdsourced and can be updated by any user who is signed-in. There are no advertisements anywhere on the website, making it one of neatest user interfaces in some time now.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

An active traveller instead of a passive tourist is Travelomy’s core customer. We define a “active traveller” as somebody who like to go and do things rather than purely sight-see around as a tourist.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Yes. Travelomy now has more than 20,000 unique visitors a month and we have been getting increasingly better feedback with every new feature and iteration.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Travel related ecommerce is going to be the core of the revenue model. Working with its partners, Travelomy aims to provide all kinds of travel related bookings – hotels, flights, packages, deals etc.

As building engagement with the travellers is the biggest single focus on Travelomy, we hope to leverage that as a competetive advantage for gaining a bigger share of the pie.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Technology is Travelomy’s biggest strength and we plan to leverage that effectively across all the product features. An example is the recently introduced “real-time curated travel feeds” based on Twitter which make Travelomy the first-ever travel guide globally to introduce a cool and dynamic element to usually static destination information. See the Kathmandu page on Travelomy to see how this feature really adds value to content.

Weaknesses:

• Operations is an area of weakness. As any travel product at some point would involve a significant operational aspect, it is a weakness we need to mitigate.
• While our goals are hugely ambitious, it also means that we end up pitting ourselves against many broad and niche players. As a startup, we might end up having one too many competitors.

Opportunities:

• The lack of a brand in the travel domain is the biggest opportunity. Almost all major players are either content or pricing plays. Lonely Planet is perhaps the closest travel has to a global brand, but it is almost entirely associated with the guidance phase of travel. There is an opportunity to build for travel what Facebook is to social, and that is what where we intend to take Travelomy.
• Active travellers are a growing tribe in travel. And one that traditional travel heavywieghts have ignored in favor of tourists where the volumes lie. While it is easy to find information or make bookings for a sign-seeing trip to Taj Mahal, it is not exactly easy to find information on motorcycling routes in Bhutan or make arrangements to travel by motorcycle. We are soon launching an Activity module built on top of Google Maps that would increase the quality of information related to things like trekking, hiking, motorcycling, biking etc. by a big margin.
• There is no truly platform company in travel. We intend to make Travelomy one.

Threats:

• Technology, which is our strength is not impossible to replicate. Our technology based advantages therefore might not sustain for very long, we would therefore need to pad them up with something else as well
• There are big players eyeing a pie of huge online travel vertical. Their marketing muscle gives them an enormous advantage in taking out smaller startups, how so much innovating. Travelomy would need to beat such players with speed, both of innovation and execution.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

Many of our peers advised that travel is a commoditized market with strong incumbent benefits.

We believe in innovation’s ability to challenge the strength of incumbency, so we chose to ignore thir advice and validate our product at a minimal cost.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

One million monthly unique visitors, with more than 30% direct traffic and a return rate of 30% is our (somewhat) stretch target at this point.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Tripbox was born out of the need to provide cheap holidays for friends and family. Tripbox has since evolved into a fully fledged online travel agency, selling holidays to the wider public whilst adhering to its low cost ethos.

It was founded by Savio Fernandes, a travel enthusiast with experience in software development and design.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

Tripbox has been bootstrapped up to this point; however, we do have some exciting ideas that need developing which may require us to raise capital in the future.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Searching for a holiday on the web can be a stressful experience, not helped by the gaudy colour schemes and deals and advertisements that usually clutter travel websites.

So, we wanted to develop a website where the holiday search experience would be enjoyable with the information always displayed in a comprehensible manner.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Tripbox sells low-cost hotels, travel ancillaries and flights to a wide array of destinations. The website is plugged into most major bed banks and ancillary suppliers offering great choice to customers.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Our key customers are couples and families mostly interested in beach holidays. Our main age demographic is 18 – 40 years old.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Customers have commended Tripbox for its fresh look and straight forward booking process.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Tripbox is solely reliant on online bookings and does not take bookings over the phone. This results in low running costs and helps us sell holidays at a cheaper price.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Engaging website with an inspiring, clean and consistent layout different from the homogenous ‘travel agency’ look.
• Search results only display the essential information in an intuitive manner and a range of easy to use filters help make the volume of information easily comprehensible for the user.
• Straightforward booking process.
• Sell holidays as cheap as possible.

Weaknesses:

• New player in a very crowded marketplace and lacking brand awareness.
• Reliant on data from slow third party content providers.

Opportunities:

• Build a steady customer base as users become more price conscious.

Threats:

• Larger, well-established online travel agencies.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

We’ve been fortunate to have a lot of support from people who have appreciated our concepts from the very beginning.

We did have some people say that good design is not the thing that may attract and inspire customers, but we believe that design coupled with low prices make a very effective combination.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

In 12 months time, we hope to have found a good foot hold with a decent customer base, aware of our brand and our low prices.

We would also like to further enhance our site and include some interesting features which are in a conceptual stage at the moment.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

We’re a team of three girls, specialists in dedicated areas.

• Ola is our CEO and programmer, she has already created two successful startups, FashionStyle and Animili.
• Kasia is our interactive designer with ten years of experience, designing for some of the most biggest banks and automotive companies like Lexus or Toyota.
• Paulina is our marketing manager who has successfully promoted Spanish and Polish startups for the past five years and organizes events for startupers.

In addition we have a strong networks of our ambassadors who reside in the most important European cities, such as London, Madrid, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

Until now we are self-funded, but we also sold 1% stake of an auction site to cover the costs associated with marketing. We’re raising our seed round right now.

What problem are you trying to solve?

We’re killing two birds with one stone and resolve two of the most basic problems of travelers, locals and local experts.

On the one hand we’re responding to the question: “What to do in the city I travel or live in”. But also we help local experts to make money doing what they love.

People, both travelers and locals need an inspiration and are fed up with generalized tours and activities. They also don’t know which offers and people are trustworthy and finding interesting things to do takes them definitely too much time.

Local experts need a simple and flexible way to make money, but they are afraid, because they don’t know how to manage marketing, payments, bookings and all the rest of business stuff.

We give travelers, locals and local experts a simple, safe and quick solution.

Describe the business, core products and services?

MyGuidie is an online marketplace that helps tourists and locals who don’t know how to spend their free time, find unique experiences and activities, provided by passionate local experts, with matching offers to their interests.

We provide local experts a revolutionary and complete tool that allows them to get paid for their passion easily and safely, build their reputation and focus on what they do best, leaving in our hands all the issues related to marketing, reservations, payments and customer service.

To the rest of people we provide a readily available and reliable platform for interesting activities, tours and events, that contains only hand-picked and approved by us, high-quality personalized offers.

We inspire people to go out and acquire new skills and do new things, but also to travel and explore the world in a completely different way than previously known.

We’re interested in everything that is authentic and unique: places which are not described in guidebooks, local dishes that are prepared according to traditional recipes handed down from generation to generation over the centuries and the company of local people.

On the one hand we want to emphasize how important experiences from travels are, on the other, we show that even the city in which we live from births, conceals from us a lot of amazing people, meetings and activities, which are at our users’ fingertips.

We allow both individuals and businesses offers, always when activities and experiences are provided by a concrete person.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Our key consumers are:

• people, mostly from Europe, who want to learn and try new things in cities they live in
• independent tourists who look for personal and unique experiences
• local experts who look for a flexible and easy way to make money by sharing their passion

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Of course we have. Two months after launching we had 53 experiences and 65 successful transactions.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

We charge a 15% reservation fee from people who reserve our experiences and activities. We don’t charge local experts at any time.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Our service is intuitive and easy to use.
• We offer a lot of social and personalization features that make MyGuidie and the offers viral, like matching offers to users interests based on facebook profiles, custom requests and wishlist (if someone wants a certain experience we featured it on our page within one week).
• We’re sure about our offers quality – all of them are hand-picked.
• We’re a versatile, flexible and experienced team.

Weaknesses:

• We’re a small team with limited resources

Opportunities:

• A lot of people (local experts) look for additional ways to make money
• Large number of cheap airline connections leads to increased interest in independent travelling
• We have a lot of possible partners, for example, flight searching and hotel booking services
• Growing number of people that appreciate personalized offers
• Social travelling is a strong trend

Threats:

• There is quite a lot of competition in this market and there are constantly new startups appearing, focused on offering experiences.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

We launched on May 2011 with a little bit different idea and many people told us that it won’t work. So we changed our first idea and from that time we hear almost only positive opinions.

Of course there is always somebody who claims that a startup from Poland has no chance of international success, but we have succeeded in a few European competitions so we think we can handle it.

Lately, we heard from a few people that it would be hard to be a leader in European market, but fortunately it’s so big that we’re sure that we find our niche.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

We would like to be a significant player in European market, have our ambassador in every important European city and offer at least 500 amazing experiences and activities.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

If we look at online travel around the globe, we can see that the four key global emerging markets – Brazil, Russia, India and China – are showing substantially greater growth than the developed world.

And they are already have a significant share of global online travel consumption.

This is beginning to show itself in the distribution of value – out of the top five most valuable publicly traded OTAs, three are outside the US (CTrip, MakeMyTrip and eLong). But who wins in those markets, and, more importantly, why?

In this article I am arguing that local players have an overwhelming advantage versus global players, and also describing the key characteristics of the local players that end up winning.

This perspective is based on our experience building Ostrovok (an online hotel booking product for the Russian market), as well as extensive research on key winners and losers in China, India and Brazil.

Why being local is an overwhelming advantage

At first glance it isn’t clear why the market leaders in BRIC countries are local. It seems that the Pricelines and Expedias of the world have significant advantages:

• Large pools of capital
• Established global supply bases appealing to BRIC consumers
• The ability to direct significant flows of global customers to BRIC hotels
• Experience developed over many years of success.

However, those advantages aren’t as significant as they initially seem:

1. Funds

Capital isn’t an advantage against local teams that know how to raise it.

A BRIC startup can raise $100 million in venture capital to invest on the way to success; any public company executive that spends that much money to fight in a non-core market will have the shareholders clamouring for his head.

2. Supply

Global supply is freely accessible through many of the local and global market leaders that are looking to aggregate demand into their core markets via affiliate partners.

3. Customers

Global customer flow to BRIC hotels is important, but:

• Local customers eventually become the dominant source of local hotel demand
• Global customers have little brand loyalty to global OTAs: they metasearch and go to whoever has better rates/availability for the BRIC hotel, i.e. the local OTA.

4. Legacy

Experience is of dubious value. Most successful Internet companies were built by outsiders because in rapidly changing markets flexibility matters more than legacy knowledge.

For evidence of this, look no further than at how online travel incumbents struggle with exploiting new distribution channels (social/mobile).

On the other hand, local players have substantial advantages that aren’t immediately obvious:

• Local fulfillment
• Local marketing
• Local supply

Let’s look at those elements in further detail:

Fulfillment

1. Local Payment Solutions.

The way people pay online varies significantly from country to country.

This is why CTrip has messengers collecting cash from people; Despegar sells a large portion of its hotels on installment plans; and Ostrovok processes payments via ATMs and mobile retailers. Global players do none of this, and lose a huge chunk of potential customers as a result.

2. Local customer support.

Consumers in BRIC countries need telephone support and transactions; help with visa issues; help learning to trust the Internet.

For example, CTrip embraces high-touch customer support, staffs its call centers with thousands of people and delivers a level of service unmatched in the West – a live agent answers 99%+ of calls instantly 24/7.

This enables the development of far greater trust with consumers.

Marketing

1. Local channels.

As the platforms through which users can be reached are substantially different in emerging markets, local marketing focus is a substantial advantage. SEM/SEO on Baidu or Yandex is quite different from CPC on Google; other channels with negotiated deals are even more so.

2. Local offline marketing.

Global players tend to be unable to stretch their organization to do offline advertising and tend not to appreciate its strength.

For example, MakeMyTrip in India or Despegar in Brazil both used TV campaigns to build much stronger brands than the global players.

3. Local culture focus. It should be self-evident that a person in another country that doesn’t even speak the local language can’t notice the nuances of cultural perception, morphology and many other issues obvious to locals.

Supply

1. Local focus.

Hotel supply is a high-touch, local business driven by relationships. As a result, over time local OTAs take the lead in terms of breadth of hotel coverage and in terms of rates and availability domestically.

This has already happened in Brazil, India and China and is happening in Russia right now.

2. Local hotel solutions.

By being attentive to the needs of local hotels, superior results can be delivered. For example, CTrip and eLong in China work with hotels in an on-request fax-based way, as well as via an extranet, and even today approximately 40% of Ctrip’s bookings are done this way.

Another example is that Ostrovok in Russia uses local-law contracts which are significantly preferred by local hotels for tax and accounting reasons.

Getting a strategy

Overall, a good way to summarize the advantages of a local player is that they are developing a custom solution for the local market, which is an easy sell against one-size-fits-all template solutions provided by global OTAs.

A final note to make here is that while the particulars may vary, the dominance of local Internet companies in emerging markets is not unique to online travel.

China is well-known for this, but the same is true in Russia, where hardly any of the Western internet companies have succeeded. Google trails Yandex with one third of its market share. Facebook is only the 4th biggest social network.

Groupon (which started as a leader in a market it has invented) has been overtaken by local player Biglion. Amazon, eBay, LinkedIn, Zynga and other global titans are nowhere to be seen.

So while many global players will attempt to compete in emerging markets, there is no reason to believe that they will be successful

What determines which of the local players will win?

Now that we have established that local beats global in the online travel industry, which of the local players actually do win?

In the process of figuring out the right strategy for Ostrovok, we have attracted investors/advisors from key global players in developed and emerging markets, and have done a lot of research on such players.

We have learned a lot about the strategies used and reasons behind the success of CTrip, eLong and Qunar in China; MakeMyTrip, Yatra and Cleartrip in India; Despegar and Viajanet in Brazil.

When we asked those players and their competitors about what determined the winners, the first factor everyone mentioned is “a very strong team”.

This was too obvious and generic an answer, but when we dug deeper we found three specific unifying characteristics at the winners in China, India and Brazil:

• Prior knowledge of the local market in executive teams.
• Technical engineering ability on the team.
• Ability to raise Western capital on the team.

What was also fascinating was that those three strengths taken together worked to create significant competitive advantages. Having talented engineers brought in more talented engineers.

Having executives with local experience helped bring in suppliers. Having the technical and supply capabilities brought in more capital, which helped bring in even more talent.

Once this virtuous cycle got started, other local players were unable to catch up.

How we built our strategy as a result of this research

So when we started Ostrovok, we built our strategy versus domestic competition around these key strengths:

• We are unique amongst all Russian online travel companies in that we have a team of more than 25 people who write code (not counting QA, designers and the like), many of them from top tech companies in Russia like Yandex. Techology is always the bottleneck to all other parts of the organization, and we are planning to expand to 150 people writing code by the end of 2012.
• We used local supply expertise to build the largest hotel supply acquisition team in Russia, and grow our local hotel supply base faster than that of any other player. This was done by Andrew Pyner, who was previously CEO of the Russian office of Booking.com, led Russian supply acquisition efforts for Expedia and GTA, and worked for Radisson in St Petersburg.
• Because of the strength of the team (and the past experience of the founders as entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley), we have been able to raise more capital than all other local players combined from leading global investors – General Catalyst, Accel and a number of others.

In conclusion, our prognosis is that the winners in emerging online travel markets will turn out to be local players with strong technical teams, a deep understanding of local suppliers, and the ability to raise a lot of capital.

And, over time, today’s situation will be reversed as those younger, faster and more aggressive players will begin to compete in developed countries.

NB: This is a guest article by Serge Faguet, co-founder of Ostrovok, a Russian-based hotel-focused online travel agency.

NB2: Image via shutterstock.

Previously available via its mobile apps, the launch of this feature as a section on the Foursquare website shows the company is making a serious push into local search on the web.

But more than that, the company may have finally nailed the “holy grail” many travel planning startups have been yearning for: utilizing your friends’ behaviors and preferences to recommend things for you to do.

How it works

Let’s take a brief look at how the feature works. Upon loading, you’re presented with a simple dialog asking what you’re looking for:

Note the options in the bottom right. In addition to being able to simply explore new places you haven’t been to yet, you’re also able to easily search for places your friends have been to.

Here’s a quick example of a search for coffee shops in London:

You’re quickly shown a map with places your friends have visited, how often they’ve been there, and what they’ve had to say about them. Of course, this feature exists on countless other travel planning sites.

But Foursquare has a secret weapon that no other travel startup can come even close to matching: Over 1.5 billion checkins worldwide, a truly massive amount of data on past consumer behavior. Each of these checkins has tracked:

• Where the user is
• The time of day the user checked in
• Whether they’re with a friend
• Any comments the user has left via Foursquare’s “Tips” feature
• Any photos the user chose to attach

Utilizing big data technology, Foursquare has been able to analyze this data on an aggregate level and extract value from it by determining a plethora of useful patterns such as:

• What places my friends like going to at specific times of the day, eg: “Your friends prefer these lunch spots”.
• Where my friends like to stay, eg: “Your friends stay at these hotels when visiting New York”.
• What my friends like to do, eg: “Your friends love doing the Eiffel Tower tour when in Paris”.

What’s different about Foursquare’s effort is that unlike most travel planning sites, Foursquare hasn’t had to ask users to recommend things post-facto or bribe them into having to manually enter this data — this data was shared in real-time, giving it authenticity and lacking the sort of bias towards popularity frequently seen on other sites.

But Foursquare hasn’t stopped at just allowing you to search for places: Explore also now searches the massive amount of data contained in Tips and Reviews left by users, enabling a user to free text search for places and recommendations such as “chic boutique hotel” and really dig into what users think about particular places.

The power of this is perhaps best demonstrated when combined with the ability to follow brands on Foursquare.

Imagine you follow The Travel Channel on Foursquare – now, when searching Explore for places to eat, you might find places with recommendations left by popular Travel Channel personalities such as Anthony Bourdain.

Enabling users to easily find things they’ve previously expressed interest in is another important feature of Explore.

Utilizing the “Save for later” feature, a user can easily bookmark spots in a city they wish to visit in the future.

When visiting that city, Explore would allow the user to easily find spots they’ve bookmarked. This is in addition to Foursquare’s Radar feature, which can automatically alert you when you’re near a place you’ve saved.

Why planning startups should worry

It’s easy to dismiss Foursquare’s efforts as yet another attempt at a problem countless other startups have failed at.

But Foursquare has what many travel startups don’t, including over 15 million registered users, approximately half a billion checkins in the last six months alone, and buy-in from some of the world’s largest brands including a recent deal with American Express. In a word, traction.

But beyond traction, Foursquare’s massive data trove will be hard for most startups to catch up with.

By demonstrating true value to users (such as the recent American Express Small Biz Saturday which saw users who linked their card receive a $25 statement credit), the company will likely continue to accelerate its adoption and usage rates.

This will give it an even bigger trove of data with which to work with and launch new features.

And finally, Foursquare has one of the best startup teams out there. Its discipline in growing the company from a simple location-based game to where they are today shows incredible depth and vision.

But…

Foursquare hasn’t won yet. There are of course other companies with even more data making efforts in the local space, including the recent launch of Google’s Schemer.

Facebook can’t be ignored in this space either, tracking the location of its users everytime their mobile apps is launched. The fact that only 5% of US adults use location-based apps can’t be ignored either.

Will 2012 be the year that this changes? We’ll see.

One thing is for sure: By moving Foursquare Explore to the web, Foursquare has a serious contender in the battle for the travel planning crown.

It’ll be interesting to see how other startups respond.

So what happened in the intervening 12 months?

Are you making money yet?

Yes! We commenced sales during the pre-release stage, as soon as our demo prototype was ready.

We now have 19 clients on board, as well as an exclusive distributor in the African continent. Our Gross Revenue for 2011 reached US $400K in license sales (not including transactional fees).

What has been the biggest problem – building the product/service or marketing it to consumers/travel industry?

Commencing sales at a pre-release stage required us to find corporate early adopters, in an industry deeply troubled by global financial instability.

We went to great lengths to find those clients, but the investment was well-worth it.

Early adopters enjoyed not only amazingly low licensing costs for a great system, but also were given a unique opportunity to take part in the actual design of the system!

As our system matured and more and more elements went live, the overall uniqueness of our solutions became easier to demonstrate. The audience of potential clients grew, and so are our sales.

Biggest assumption in the business plan that was wrong?

We grossly underestimated the political climate of our industry. Gaining access to some of the resources (suppliers) now available through our system was not only expensive, but also required extensive negotiation and networking.

In a process similar to what we went through with our clients – by demonstrating our system’s capabilities, our suppliers were able to recognize the great potential in cooperation, thereby opening many of the doors we desired to enter.

Is your current customer base as predicted?

While we initially targeted small to mid-size travel agencies in particular countries, some of our clients today are actually major players in their respective markets across the world.

Clients intend to use our:

• API to enhance the range and quality of their product offering
• B2B system to streamline and exponentially grow their distribution network
• B2C plug-ins to rapidly evolve their online presence.

In short, client size, geographical location, and nature of operations turned up to be much more diverse than we initially expected.

Did you achieve your 12 month goals? If not, why not?

It was an absolutely exciting year, wrought with challenges and new discoveries. We’ve had several unexpected achievements, and our goals expanded accordingly:

• Goal achieved: With 19 clients on board, we reached our financial goals, and expect to reach 250,000 queries/day over the next two months. While the number of clients is less than expected, their magnitude is significantly greater that our original targets.
• Goal achieved: Having connected most of the suppliers we planned for the year – we solidified our ‘Mapping-Normalization’ technology, which is currently Patent Pending.
• Goal achieved: We’ve established the 10-day XML integration capability which today enables us to instantly scale our resource integration. While the typical connection of new XMLs is done upon request by client or supplier – two suppliers have already chosen to become Preferred (Premium) suppliers – JacTravel, and Exclusively Hotels – so that both are always available to our clients at no additional cost.
• New accomplishment: Our sales process changed, with an exclusive distributor running our African sales operations (headed by Mr. Udo Klotz and Tebogo Seagang) – we look forward developing our global network of resellers this year.
• Goal change: Instead of developing social and mobile applications at this stage (there are lots of solutions out there that can take our API and fill their content gap) we enhanced our distribution capabilities, providing clients with important tools to develop sub-agent networks. Some of these elements include multi-level financial controls, per-user B2C booking engine deployment, and sophisticated mark-up capabilities.

Has the problem you were trying to solve changed?

No. In fact it got worse: travel operations of all sizes are at a loss as to how to retain their market share, how to effectively connect new resources to their system, and how to effectively grow their distribution network.

Some of our clients were forced to work on 10 different B2B systems in order to offer competitive products!

Access to third party content, the ability to combine it with your own inventory, and the effective distribution of the resulting products across multiple sales channels are key components for any travel operation.

Presently available solutions are either extremely expensive and/or provide only a partial solution to the problem.

Which startup that has launched in the past 12 months did you think “Ah, wish we had done that!”?

Most of the startups launched this year focused on a single simple concept, with their long-term success depending on how long they can stay trendy, useful and relevant).

Our goal is to provide a solid back-bone for travel operations in the form of a powerful technological infrastructure, upon which travel operations of all kinds and sizes can effectively grow their business, taking into three major aspects into account:

• Connectivity to multiple travel resources (suppliers) and their standardization
• Offering a variety of travel products
• Effective sales through multi-channel distribution

No one has dared to undertake such an ambitious development – as it requires substantial funding, an in-depth understanding of the travel industry, and overcoming the considerable barriers to entry that exist in each market.

Moreover, we witnessed large established technology players making initial attempts to enhance their abilities to provide similar blanket solutions.

Our ability to use the latest technologies available, and quickly respond to market needs – gave us a substantial advantage in providing superb and cost effective products.

If you could go back in time and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?

“Get the best people you can, whatever their cost”. It was a long process of trial and error, until we got the team we have in place today.

Our ideas could not materialize without the remarkable talent, and out-of-the-box thinking of our people!

NB: Tnooz launched TLab Showcase in March 2010, a dedicated channel to give startups in the travel, tourism and hospitality sector an opportunity to explain their vision, company background and strategy to a wider audience.

As well as publishing an elevator pitch-type questionnaire for each business, Tnooz committed to following up with each startup after 12 months or so to see how well (or not) each performed.

NB2: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Folloyu was founded by Alfred Shaffir at the beginning of 2011, who is also the active CEO. Alfred is a veteran of the semi-conductor industry, doing various roles in Intel and Cadence Design systems.

He holds an MBA from Bar-Ilan University and a BSc in Mechanical engineering from Tel Aviv University.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

So far, Folloyu is bootstrapped.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Online users are subject to interruptions which require them to disengage from their current online activity. The result in most cases is a complete abandonment of the content they were engaged in.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Folloyu’s solution enables online users to switch device while remaining in the same activity they were involved with, in a matter of a click.

For example, online shopper can move from his laptop to his mobile while the information, like what page he was on, shopping cart content, and even secured information (e.g. login) is exactly restored on the smartphone.

The value proposition for websites:

• Increasing mobile presence
• Increasing conversion rates
• Increasing time on site
• Improving overall customer satisfaction and loyalty

In addition, the customer will have access to a digested report describing the usage of Folloyu technology in his site, and additional information about his visitors browsing habits and mobile behaviour.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Folloyu technology fits to almost every website around: ecommerce/traveling, publishers, video, trading, gaming and other content owners. At the moment, we are concentrating our effort in the ecommerce and publishers verticals.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Our service was validated before starting R&D and we are receiving excellent feedback since then. There is a constant flow of customers that recognize Folloyu’s benefits and embed it into there website.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Currently the service is free of charge. In the future we plan to charge our customers according to a monthly subscription plan, based on the amount of traffic a particular website will require. Our customers will receive notification prior to start of billing.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

There is a great opportunity these days to create a solution that on one hand addresses one of the biggest problems in the online world – the abandonment – and on the other hand, utilizes the abundance of devices hooked to the web.

Presently there are some solutions addressing mainly end-users’ in various industries: music listening (fivedetails.com), chatting (trillian.im), video (Vantrix.com) and even Google’s Chrome to Phone extension.

We believe that the competition will continue concentrating on the end users, while Folloyu will focus on producing a broad, generic and simple to implement B2B solution.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

About 5% of the people I have discussed this with, thought it was not a good idea. The rest were enthusiastic. So basically, this is a good idea.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

10,000 subscribers.

Here is a clip:

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Touristlink provides a totally new way for travellers to find and book services online, especially those they have a hard time finding elsewhere on the web.

Members can use our simple form to request whatever they want whether it is a “Taxi Pickup from an Airport” or a “Guided trip to Mt. Kilimanjaro”.

Once a request is made it goes out to our network of travel agents and guides who can then make offers from which the member is free to choose one if he likes. This functionality is seamlessly built into a content rich social platform where travellers can interact with each other and with local businesses.

Touristlink is developed by GoTripIndia, a web development firm founded by David Urmann in 2005 which now employs over 70 IT professionals.

Prior to launching Touristlink we launched several other successful travel sites including: Travelaffiliatepro, an affiliate program for travel website owners, and Hotelkhoj, an online hotel booking portal developed exclusively for the Indian market which lists over 2,000 hotels.

• David Urmann is the Founder and CEO. His global perspective and scientific background have helped him launch successful business ventures in both the travel and outsourcing industries. He is an avid traveler having visited over 40 countries and is the author of a travel guide book on his home state of Utah.
• Jayesh Badge is the Cofounder and COO. He has 9+ years of experience in advertising agencies & IT. He oversees the Indian operations of the company.
• Deepak Gupta is the lead programmer at Touristlink engaged in the development of client side, server side scripts. He specializes in the LAMP & Open Source Software.
• Ganesh Chavan is the manager of customer support & public relations, Ganesh has 6+ years of experience with leading names in industry like IBM and GE for Banking solutions.

Our entire team can be seen here.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

We are bootstrapping the launch from our existing revenues. We are looking forward to a point where it makes sense for us to bring on additional funding.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Our conversations with travellers and feedback from customers showed us a clear need for a service that would connect travellers to local service providers.

Many of our existing customers have mentioned how hard it is to find local service providers online for things like trip packages, tour guides and arranging ground transport.

This feedback from customers was reinforced for me by lots of personal experiences. For instance, last year I planned a weeklong tour in Rajasthan with my wife and mother but didn’t really want to book an overpriced tour with a travel agency which I didn’t have any experience with and who wanted me to wire half the money before I arrived.

As it happened we ended up finding a great guide but it was just by chance. Another example occurred on a trip I took to China where I remember looking for a translator / city guide and I ended up finding someone on Craigslist but I wasn’t sure who I was really dealing with and it would have made me feel better if I could have seen reviews from other customers to help me know I was making the right choice.

Touristlink solves this travelling dilemma by letting local providers sign up and then offer their services in response to requests by our members.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Touristlink looks to target the travel activities market by providing a service that lets travellers request the exact services they need and then receive multiple offers from travel providers.

Most transactions in this $80 billion marketplace are still occurring offline and 90% of providers state that they face product display and cost issues with existing distribution channels which are significant barriers to increasing sales.

Touristlink intends to solve these problems and become the primary website for these transactions by providing a marketplace which is seamlessly built into a content rich social platform where travellers can interact with each other and with local businesses.

One thing keeping us excited is our mobile application which we will be launching in the New Year.

The mobile app is very simply the request that allows travellers to request services no matter where they are. We are essentially giving our members a very simple application which will put them directly in contact with our entire network of travel providers.

We think that making this service accessible to be people on the go and actually travelling will be an important key to our success.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

We are focusing on marketing locally and we currently have marketing teams in several popular tourist locations in India who are directly introducing our service to both local travellers and foreigners.

The initial response is encouraging and we hope that as we improve conversions we will be able to scale this operation to more locations.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Touristlink is a direct result of conversations and feedback from our customers which showed us the need for this type of service.

We have been in the online travel business for four years and are responsible for the successful of development of several websites.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Once a traveller selects an offer from a travel provider he pays 10% of the total price which we keep as our commission and the rest is paid on delivery.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Touristlink aims to target a giant market in which no dominant competitor exists and most of the transactions are still occurring offline. The opportunity lies in bringing these transactions online.

They occur offline as many of the providers in the segment are small businesses doing less than a million a year in revenue and even if they have websites they often lack the ability to manage transactions or availability.

That such a large market exists with no dominant leader signifies to us the need for a fundamentally different solution.

All of our competitors are trying to force a traditional online booking system on to small businesses with highly variable products – a booking engine in which products are defined by a set of standard variables and availability is managed independently for each.

Having dealt first hand with over 2,000 hotel owners in India, we do not think this is the right approach and instead believe the request-offer model that we are offering will be much more suited to this market where the products are highly variable and where getting providers to correctly upload products and then continuously update availability is difficult at best.

Even if we are not asking providers to take on the complicated task of uploading products we must still face the fact that many of the providers have limited experience marketing services on the web.

This means many of them need to be individually worked with and essentially trained on how to use our system. This implies a relatively high workload per provider but being located in Nagpur one of the least expensive cities in India might give us an edge over competitors trying to do the same on a large scale elsewhere.

If one quickly browses through Touristlink it is clear that it is much more than a transactional platform it is for the visitor primarily a social network and destination guide. Every Touristlink member is different and this is reflected in his online profile.

We believe that the travel providers who will be most successful on the site will be able to take advantage of this and customize offers based on the members profiles.

A key part of the Touristlink strategy is making the site a place where travellers can build relationships with providers and ask questions and get advice even if the end result is not a sale.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

Sometimes it feels like everyone is a critic and I think the best thing you can do with the criticism is not to take it personally but to try to learn from it.

We have built enough websites to know that it is a constant testing and refinement process as you interact with visitors.

The key thing to success is just to move forward everyday and try to make the product better. We were invited to attend Seedcamp, an early stage mentoring and investment program, this past November in Barcelona and we received some great advice.

I thought we had a pretty defined business concept going into this program but in-depth discussions with our mentors definitely pointed us in some new directions and certainly made us focus on what our key concepts are.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

If we are engaging our users and getting them to come back and use our service then we will be successful.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Tripsy was created by two people – Ryan Kaminsky and Nav Kesher – who are passionate about using technology and their experiences to make travel more social, personal, and fun.

• Ryan has a BS and an MS in Computer Science, and an MBA in marketing from Duke University. He has worked at a number of top-notch tech and travel firms including TripAdvisor, Amazon and Microsoft and is currently a product manager at Yelp in San Francisco.
• Nav has a BS in engineering and an MBA in finance from USC. He has previously worked as a consultant and a financial analyst at US Airways and currently works in finance and business development.

Both founders are well versed in application development and although they aren’t developers at their “real” jobs, they passionately work on apps in their free time because they have ideas they want to share.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

Currently the venture is completely self-funded by the two partners.

What problem are you trying to solve?

In 2011 smartphones accounted for 27% of photos up from 17% in 2010. While the number of smartphone pictures has grown dramatically, there haven’t been significant efforts in harnessing and using the metadata contained in these photos.

The information and media is essentially “trapped” on someone’s phone and won’t be freed to tell an interesting story without significant effort on the part of the user to tag, label, group and upload images.

Tripsy frees the travel experiences trapped in the pictures and videos on someone’s iPhone, enabling the user to:

Have their stories automatically created using these pictures and videos as well as the location and timeline data attached to this media
Share travel stories with family and friends

Describe the business, core products and services?

We believe that you shouldn’t have to do a lot of work to organize and share your travel stories.

Tripsy is an iPhone application that makes it easy for people to create a virtual passport of their travel experiences by unlocking the “information in their photos”, which can then be used to share travel stories in new and interesting ways.

In a nutshell, Tripsy reads all the photos and videos on your iPhone, organizes and displays them by city and plots the path you travelled on a map while in that city.

All this is done automatically without any effort required by the user other than kicking off the process.

After the initial organization, people are free to further curate their travels if they like or they can begin to share their stories through email or on Facebook by creating mosaic travel postcards in just a few taps.

We are currently working on new and exciting ways to organize, storyboard and share trips–with minimum effort on the part of users. Further out, we plan to build a community around the virtual passport, postcards and travel stories and launch on more platforms.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

At official launch, our key users will be influential writers and bloggers in the world of travel and technology. This will aid in getting momentum building for the app.

However we are most excited that ANYONE who has taken photos with their iPhone will be able to use and benefit from our app.

And we truly believe they will be surprised and delighted at being able to relive their travels and the cities they’ve visited with one simple tap.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Our approach has been to quietly release the app on iTunes and gather feedback from customers, iterate and then launch a more significant marketing and partnership effort.

Thus far, the app has been very well received and there have been some common themes within the feedback that we plan to address in an update shortly.

We plan to iterate for a few more cycles before approaching investors.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

We intend to offer the app for free on various platforms starting with iOS. Our revenue will come from:

• Selling physical postcards that customers create in the app
• Selling app add-ons that allow users more options to create visually stunning and unique postcards
• Enhanced/Advanced organizational options for trips

When we build out a community of users we will explore additional revenue and profitability opportunities.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Ease of use
• Quick collection of content
• Unique organization of content
• Team – strong experience in technology and travel
• First mover advantage

Weaknesses:

• New/unknown product
• Lack of online presence

Opportunities:

• Content collection partnerships: online travel and related sites are looking for content (TripAdvisor’s Cities I’ve Visited and Where I’ve Been, Gogobot, Google maps images)
• Expansion into social
• Partnerships with photo/postcard products

Threats:

• Duplication of automatic processing model and functionality by one of a number of companies in related areas

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

When we first discussed the idea of Tripsy, we brainstormed its feasibility with a number of friends in the travel and tech industries.

Although most seemed excited about the idea, they ultimately chose not to work on the product, an indication of their skepticism.

Their two main arguments were that the model of creating a travel story while “in trip” is more desirable and that the app store already has a slew of apps, which, if used together, could produce the same result as Tripsy.

We strongly believed that these arguments miss out on unique insights. Our app fits in naturally with the way people most often enjoy travel.

They visit places, snap photos of enjoyable moments and don’t want to take time out to “document” what is happening in the moment. When they return to their hotel or back home, they can let Tripsy effortless build their travel stories.

We know people love an integrated experience in a single app that requires minimal effort, yet produces never-before-seen results.

Using several apps to (possibly) reproduce Tripsy requires much more effort than the average traveler will put forth.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

Our short-term success metric is downloads. We would like to achieve 100,000 downloads in 2012.

Our longer term success metric is user engagement. We would like users to continually return to our app to view their trips, process new trip photos and send and share more postcards.

Measuring posts on Facebook and other social-sharing platforms will be an important metric for measuring engagement.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

We are a startup company based in southern Germany. Our first product was the German job search engine Opportuno. Opportuno has been launched in 2007 as a bootstrap with some radically new features (at the time) like advanced deep-web crawling and a user interface called “Instant View”, which can be seen as an early anticipation of what is now known as Google Instant.

Opportuno is still our main product. It is profitable and allows us to allocate resources to new ventures.

We started to work on cartographic hotel finders in 2009, mainly because we were unhappy with existing travel websites.

In 2010, we launched our first hotel finder called Hotelprise in Germany, which allowed us to build up knowledge and experience in the travel industry.

In December 2011, we launched HotelMaps, our first project with international focus.

Founders:

• Andreas Bogen – prior to founding Opportuno, Andreas worked for a global strategy consulting firm. Focus areas of his consulting work include innovation and growth as well as marketing for high-tech companies. Earlier in his career, Andreas worked for four years as a project and account manager in an international online agency. Andreas holds an MBA from the University of Cambridge, UK.
• Micheal Bogen – Michael is an experienced software engineer, specialized in large scale database applications and advanced web technologies. His prior work experience includes consulting and software development in the public and banking sector and database development at Oracle. Michael studied computer science in Germany and the USA.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

HotelMaps has been financed using free cash flow from our initial product, Opportuno.com.

What problem are you trying to solve?

It always bothered us that most hotel reservation and travel websites look and feel like they were designed ten years ago.

Overloaded with information and advertising, they show little focus on the user. Above all, we think the implementation of maps has often been neglected. A tiny map with dots marked with A, B, C and a corresponding table is not what we consider a user friendly solution.

This is particularly odd considering that the location is probably the most important information when booking a hotel, along with the room rate and category.

Describe the business, core products and services?

We built our hotel finder entirely on maps. Different from other recently launched map based hotel websites such as Hipmunk or Google’s own Hotel Finder, we want to show prices and star ratings directly on the map.

Since this is not possible with off-the-shelf solutions for Google maps, we had to develop an entirely new framework on top of Google maps.

Our technology allows us to put the most relevant information first. Each hotel icon on the map is marked with the room price and star rating. In areas where hotels are close together, icons are grouped into clusters to avoid overlaps.

Room rates and star ratings are permanently visible on the map, allowing the user to scan the most relevant information at a glance.

More than 200,000 hotels worldwide are available via HotelMaps. Once the user enters travel dates and hotel requirements, HotelMaps sources real-time room rates and availability data from more than 30 major travel sites and displays the best prices directly on the map.

Filters for price and ratings can be applied using sliders, which instantly change the results on the map.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

• Customers: OTAs and booking websites
• Users: Travelers looking for hotels – both for business and vacation

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Yes.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

We are a metasearch engine similar to Hipmunk, Trivago or Kayak. Thus we follow the same business model: our revenues are provisions from OTAs, which means we are profitable as long as our long term traffic acquisition costs stay below revenues.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• We have developed a technical solution that cannot be copied overnight
• We are a small and flexible team, and we can adjust quickly to a changing environment

Weaknesses:

• We do not have celebrity investors or the financial resources of a huge corporation

Opportunities:

• We do have a USP in a huge and growing market

Threats:

• Google as a competitor
• Google as a search engine/ traffic source
• Google as the provider of Google Maps

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

Most people actually like the idea and believe it will find its fans. Once a user is used to map-based search, it is hard to go back to the clogged tables of conventional hotel finders.

The main criticism we hear is that Google will dominate our market soon, leaving little room for small innovators.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

Important metrics for success are, among others, the number of visits and the conversion rate. However, we do not publish specific target values or long-term goals. After all, one of our strengths is our flexibility.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

TravelaBunch inspires people for great travel experiences with their friends and offers a simple group booking tool.

The company was founded in November 2011 by three young entrepreneurs who all love to travel and enjoy great travel experiences.

• Mariano Kostelec has a background in fast-growing startups having worked on the international expansion of Groupon and Wimdu in Asia.
• Ben Grech recently left the private equity fund HIG Capital to focus on his passion for travel
• Miguel Santo Amaro recently completed a Masters in Global Entrepreneurship at Babson College, splitting his time between France, China and the USA.
• Leo Lara has over ten years experience in scaling and developing web applications and has worked at ARM and other startups in the past.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

Bootstrapped and self-funded at the moment.

What problem are you trying to solve?

TravelaBunch solves two major problems. Most people love to travel and share great experiences with their friends.

However, they often lack ideas for great holiday experiences or think it’s too expensive or too complicated to organize something more unique and exciting.

Moreover, one person usually has to take full responsibility of collecting all the money and making the booking, complicating things even further.

Describe the business, core products and services?

TravelaBunch sources and packages amazing travel experiences for friends travelling together, while offering great value for money.

Our innovative group booking functionality makes it simple to book and share the cost with everyone in the group.

We make finding a holiday an entertaining and enjoyable experience, giving people inspiration with specific travel experiences for them to book.

We also use the fact that people travel together to minimize price per head (e.g. using villas and chalets, rather than hotels), and we offer a simple booking tool allowing them to split the price among everyone in the group.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

TravelaBunch targets young people, 18-34, who are adventurous and travel more than once a year.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

We have received very positive feedback from potential customers and suppliers before launching, validating our proposition.

We’re currently working on a prototype.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

We source and package travel experiences and we take a small commission on each experience we sell.

We make an effort to prepare unique packages that people would have not imagined they could get.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• We have a solid value proposition and the ability to develop the business
• Partnerships with selected suppliers

Weaknesses:

• After we prove the demand for our service other people might try to copy our business and offer the same proposition

Opportunities:

• More and more people are looking for inspiration to find more exciting holidays, creating a large demand for our offering

Threats:

• Large companies actively competing for our customers
• Other online travel providers entering our niche of travel experiences for groups

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

The feedback we have received so far has been extremely positive.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

• Be recognized as a leading travel experiences provider.
• Established strong partnerships with our suppliers.
• Provided excellent service to our customers.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

I’m Elia Wallen, and I’m an entrepreneur with a passion for real estate and property management.

After experiencing some success in the temporary housing industry, I aspired to offer a service that would be able to assist anyone in the world with an internet connection and a rental property.

In August of 2011, ShortTermHousing was launched. My core team includes a former Sony developer, a former GE marketer, and host of other amazing people who contribute daily to our success.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

We are self-funded. The business that I started in 2006 supports Short Term Housing.

This is a huge advantage for us. Instead of investors telling us what to do to turn a profit, we control the vision of our site.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Why are people paying to post properties online? That’s what we were wondering when we took a look at the top property listing websites, which charge a posting fee, or take a % on the backend.

• AirBnB takes a percentage of the rental rate
• HomeAway/VRBO charges a posting fee
• Craigslist offers free listings, but has no reservation system

We created Short Term Housing to offer a free place to post properties while also giving consumers an online reservation system to book instantly online.

Describe the business, core products and services?

ShortTermHousing offers a free place for property owners to post and rent their place. Potential renters can reserve a home or apartment as conveniently as they would a hotel room on Kayak or Expedia.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

We launched in August with zero properties, and zero users. Every day since launch, people have found our site and posted properties.

We are excited about the momentum and we hope the growth continues. We are focused on all property owners who want to rent their place, and all travelers who need a place to stay.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

This site has been in my thoughts for a very long time.

Because of the nature of my other businesses (past and current) I’ve been fortunate enough to gather a lot of feedback from individual property owners from many different parts of the country. I’ve recognized the need for this for a while.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Build it and they will come… We started with a passion for putting people into properties, and never lost sight of our drive to build something that was simple, powerful, and painless.

We still refine the site daily trying to remove every possible rough edge.

We will never make people pay to list their property, and we don’t have plans to take a % off the transaction.

Our intent is for the site and the service to create a brand that’s valuable to strategic partners. Through these partnerships we’ll generate revenue and synergistic strength.

SWOT analysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• The site’s free site for landlords and tenants with many advanced features including, reservation management, Google maps, street views, payment controls, reviews, local feature listings, etc.

Weaknesses:

• Chicken or egg, we need properties to bring users, at the same time we need users to bring more listings.

Opportunities:

• Scalability, enormous audience, premium web features for free.

Threats:

• Just getting started in an established industry. David vs. Goliath

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

When I started looking at the market research it was apparent this was not going to be easy.

Many of my “advisor” friends were skeptical because of the competitive landscape and other free services out there (craigslist), but I knew that if we built it correctly the market would respond.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

We want to grow our property listings by 200% and generate more site awareness. Success for us will be achieved when we become one of the industry leaders for the vacation/short term housing industry.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

So what happened in the intervening 12 months?

Are you making money yet?

Yes. We are generating revenues that are increasing at a rapid rate month on month. 2011 has been a great year for us, we’ve grown our customer base significantly and this is set to continue through 2012.

It’s great to know that you’re developing and delivering a product that people value and are willing to pay a fair price for.

What has been the biggest problem – building the product/service or marketing it to the travel industry?

Rather than it being a problem as such, we see it more as a challenge. The travel industry is very diverse and we have been focusing on building a booking solution that can cater to all those broad needs.

For example, the requirements of booking system for a B&B is very to a villa, and camp sites and day trips are both very different again.

We didn’t want to build a platform that was limited to a single very niche area, so BookingBug’s technology has been built from the ground up to be flexible enough to suit the very diverse needs of the travel industry – and most other service-based industries.

Biggest assumption in the business plan that was wrong?

Probably the assumption that third-party relationships would have progressed more quickly than they did.

As an agile start-up, we tend to move fast because we have the flexibility and team to do so. We can make decisions and implement them at a fairly speedy pace.

I guess we assumed that pace would be matched by potential partners, but we’ve learned this year that this is rarely the case.

The upshot of this has been that timescales and projections have had to change occasionally, sometimes significantly as certain deals have happened much later than we had expected.

Is your current customer base as predicted?

Yes and no. Size-wise, we are currently at where we predicted we would be at the close of 2011.

The mix of customers is slightly different to what we had foreseen however.

The rise of the daily deals phenomenon has meant we’re now catering for a much broader range of businesses that we could have ever imagined – particularly in the travel, leisure, health and experiences industries.

Did you achieve your 12 month goals? If not, why not?

Yes. We are well on track for achieving our forecasted revenues. Broadly though, the fast-moving nature of being a start-up means sometimes the goals have changed, and we have to be agile flexible enough to deal with that and make the most of it.

So whilst we are pretty much where we expected to be at this point, the path we took to get here wasn’t exactly as we imagined it would be!

Has the problem you were trying to solve changed?

No. It hasn’t changed – but awareness of it has certainly increased, along with a better understanding about what the potential solutions are.

We expect this trend to continue through 2012 and beyond.

Which startup that has launched in the past 12 months did you think “Ah, wish we had done that!”?

There have been a whole host of of great technology and internet startups launched over the past year – and it’s great to see so many of them here in London based around the Silicon Roundabout/Tech City area.

It’s such an exciting time to be doing what we’re doing, and I couldn’t possibly name-check just one!

If you could go back in time and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?

Probably to be a little more selective about where I focus my time and energies as the company founder. It’s all to easy to be pulled in many different directions, and not give enough thought to exactly where I (and the company as whole) would be best focussed at any one time.

For example, we have invested a lot of time in pursuing certain partnerships that have ended up coming to nothing.

If I could go back and give myself one piece of advice, it would be to consider carefully when it might be best to just say no.

NB: Tnooz launched TLab Showcase in March 2010, a dedicated channel to give startups in the travel, tourism and hospitality sector an opportunity to explain their vision, company background and strategy to a wider audience.

As well as publishing an elevator pitch-type questionnaire for each business, Tnooz committed to following up with each startup after 12 months or so to see how well (or not) each performed.

NB2: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Tripbirds is a travel startup in Stockholm, Sweden. We currently have seven people on the team.

My name is Ted Valentin, and I’m one of three co-founders. Prior to Tripbirds I built a network of user generated review sites in Sweden where visitors can rate restaurants, hotels, cafés and more.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

I cannot comment at the moment.

What problem are you trying to solve?

The main problem is it’s hard to trust existing reviews sites, like Tripadvisor. Old-school review sites attract a lot of fake reviews, and there are even companies helping venue owners with “review optimization” on Tripadvisor.

For users, it’s hard to know which reviews you can trust. The solution is turning to your friends for trip related advice, just like people do in the offline world.

Describe the business, core products and services?

You use Tripbirds to get travel recommendations from friends. If you’re going to Barcelona, for example, you can see which of your friends have been there, which friends live there, and much more.

We collect data about your friends from Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla and Instagram. The service hasn’t launched yet, but you can sign up for the private beta. When you do, we give you some quite advanced statistics about your friends trips.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Since Tripbirds is built on top of checkins from other services, it helps if you understand the concept of checkins. If you a lot of friends that travel, that’s another big bonus.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

We’re doing user testing as we go along. It’s obviously a continous process.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

The business is built on some straightforward and proven revenue models in the travel space, where we have experience from previous sites.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• We have a great, very technical, team.

Weaknesses:

• We’re quite reliant on Facebook, and people’s trust in Facebook.

Opportunities:

• Travel is one of the biggest markets on the internet. I also think the timing for this is quite right.

Threats:

• As you all know there are many new entrants in the social travel space. The biggest threat is probably some awesome startup that hasn’t launched yet.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

We have pitched to some people who are not active on Facebook, and they don’t always get it.

One big challenge for us is creating a service that mostly anybody can use, not only tech-savvy people with lots of traveling friends.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

We’re aiming for a million users. There are social sites and apps have have reached a million users in a very short time in many different areas; jobs, deals, gifts, games, photos etc.

By piggybacking on existing social sites like Facebook, growth can happen quickly. But it still hasn’t happened in travel. It will, though.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

I’m Michael La Rosa – just some super lucky guy who happens to be called a CEO. My background is building awesome software.

And my team, I don’t even want to list their names – because there is no one better, and I am way too scared of people poaching them away. They are that awesome.

Cristian our developer who is a maniac, Julian our UX genius (as you can see), Cesar our chief get it done guy, and Esteban who makes sure our internet doesn’t get shut off and also on the occasion saves the world from self destruction.

But most of us have been working the last few years together, and our last company was acquired. I should really get superman uniforms made for these guys, because they are super-hero like.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

$400,000. More on the way.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Two big problems:

• Planning a trip sucks and is expensive. We are making planning a trip super easy, and amazingly awesome and a little more easy on the wallet.
• Travel businesses count on 80% of their business from travel agents and pay crazy commissions. We are going to change that, and put businesses in control of their business. Not a travel agent.

Describe the business, core products and services?

We are in the business of making a travelers trip absolutely mind blowing. We are also in the business of helping travel businesses make way more money, and having control over their reservations.

That is our business, core product, and services we provide: Travel awesomeness.

Here is a clip and demo:

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

There is no such thing for us as a key customer or key user. I think this question is pointless. Every customer is key, and every user is special.

If someone spends $1 or $1,000,000 with us, they both get treated the same – as super special customers, because they are.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

We are our customers. We build TripFab for us. When we had something we wanted to use, we took it to investors.

So I guess we are our “Chief Idea Validators”. Isn’t that how it’s suppose to be – build something with passion, right? Market research just seems so… dull and non-passionate.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

We charge a 5% transaction fee. Then, we take 4.9% of our 5% we made, and spend it all on our customers.

Our strategy for profitability is to make one travelers trip freaking amazing. If it’s one a year, one an hour, one every second – we start with one, and it’s was so awesome that you tell at least one person.

Eventually, it all works out.

I think a better question is – what are we going to do to make a travelers trip mind blowing?

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

I have never done one of these, and probably will never. Why?

Threats, to be honest, I really don’t care about competitors. I don’t look to see what people are doing, because I just don’t care.

We are building TripFab for us, and travelers that want to use us. And we will always do that. We are a team of innovators and visionaries – and we will innovate and set a vision.

The second we put any opportunities on paper, is the second we stop looking everywhere.

And our strengths and weaknesses? What are strengths are today, is our weaknesses tomorrow.

Again, we just want travelers to have the most amazing trips of their lives, and want travel businesses to have control of their business – not depend on travel agents or crappy travel aggregaters. Seriously.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

Everyone. But I listened to everyone.

Why? Because most ideas suck and don’t sound successful when they start. But when you listen to why it sucks, you can figure out each time how to make it suck less. And here we are.

So tell us how we suck so we can be better.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

The most insanely happiest travelers. One or one million. It’s all the same.

You build great companies by being crazy passionate about making sure each person is insanely happy. Everything else takes care of itself.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Launched in June 2010 to much buzz and backed by Madrona Venture Group to the tune of $1.35 million initially, Off & Away posted a notice on its website that it is “closing its doors” and has been purchased by Lockerz, which is also based in Seattle and runs a retail site with social aspects.

Eleven of Off & Away’s 12 employees, including co-founders Doug Aley and Michael Walton, are transitioning to Lockerz, which purchased Off & Away’s core assets, but has no immediate plans to enter the travel sector. Aley is now chief of member experience at Lockerz and Walton is chief product officer.

Terms of the deal were not detailed, although Lockerz revealed in a financial filing December 6 that it completed a $4 million stock offering in connection with a “business combination transaction.”

The auction model, where users buy bids to secure a hotel or other deal, has taken its lumps of late with companies, such as Swoopo, BigDeal and now Off & Away, ceasing operations.

Retaining customers and getting scale have been the big problem with at least some of these businesses.

Off & Away seemed to have solved some of the retention issues by enabling unsuccessful bidders to book hotels on a retail basis, but that cut into the company’s margins, and scaling the business was slow and problematical.

Although Lockerz has no immediate plans to get into the travel business, Off & Away says that all bookings for future travel will be honored and that refunds are in the works for unused portions of purchased Bid Packs.

“Thanks to our amazing hotel partners who were open to trying something new and innovative and for helping us understand how we could better provide value to you,” the Off & Away team says on its website.

“Thanks to our customers. You all rock. Keep dreaming and keep traveling.”

Off & Away had been featured in a TLabs Showcase in June 2010.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

• Bernhard Krupka, CEO – previously at Arthur D Little, TUI, Amadeus, Clickair and then Daemon Quest.
• Andy Owen Jones, chairman, previously CEO of Traveltainment and before that at Amadeus, Virgin and British Airways.

There are experienced platform development teams in Germany and a games studio in Equador

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

We secured Business Angel funding in September and have funded the rest of the business together with the first sales of games to major customers.

We are now closing in on first round funding and signing larger customers which enables us to be selective in our choice of funding.

What problem are you trying to solve?

How to engage with customers and ensure that brand interaction is relevant, cost effective and measurable in an age of fragmented channels.

We see games as an excellent way to educate and engage with people spending far longer playing a game than they will spend looking at an advertisement.

A well designed game conveys messages very powerfully and can be used to directly generate businesses through coupons and offers.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Karibu builds games which represent brands and brand messages and ensures that marketing spend is reflected in high quality, measurable customer interactions.

Karibu now has a portfolio of games for social media, browser and mobile. In addition we can generate coupons, track behaviour and measure customer interaction with the games and elements of the games.

Karibu is partnering to develop a travel agency channel to promote tour operator and destination products to travel agents across Germany. This will be launched imminently.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Ministry of Tourism Spain, General Motors, Danone, Budgetplaces, TUI, Killpaff, Metropolitan Tours, Coca Cola, a bank, insurance portal

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Informal discussions. But we sold our first games immediately to Danone and the Ministry of Tourism of Spain and so the model was rapidly validated.

Most of the customers we have talked to have either taken a game or have told us to come back in 2012 when they will have a budget.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

The initial model has been to have custom games built for brands. However we are in the process of moving towards transactionaland data based models with elements of revenue sharing.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Games studio, in depth CRM and data knowledge, successful management of games, portfolio of components, revenue generating clients, data capture platform, well connected in travel industry, proven delivery.

Weaknesses:

• Too few staff to capture all opportunities and not enough capital yet to hire all the people needed

Opportunities:

• Major growth of gaming, gamification and social networks and the potential is only just being introduced into mainstream customer interaction

Threats:

• Marketing budgets for social media are diverted in unproductive and unmeasurable directions

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

Our families who would have appreciated more secure jobs! But the instant client success and evident appreciation of the model suggested that there would not be a problem in creating a business

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

We have an ambitious revenue target for 2012 and are tracking to be profitable in 2013.

We aim to have the biggest database of measurable game data and brand interaction allowing customers to see how they perform relative to others.

We want to add our first major social game to our portfolio and to win business in France and the UK to add to Germany and Spain.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.