HolidayMe is a Dubai-based travel startup that offers customizable tour packages including hotels, activities and transfers. The startup is focused on the Middle East in its early stages.
Users are able to choose from a variety of pre-selected packages in cities around the world, and then customize the tours and activities.
Each package is pre-populated with suggested activities, and can then be altered from there. After crafting a holiday, the user can then book it all in one place. This means there is one brand to deal with for the entire package – a definite advantage as far as the consumer is concerned.
Here’s how the interface appears for customization:
An integration with TripAdvisor allows users to view reviews of suggested hotel for more confidence in selection.
Below is a short Vine on the travel startup, and the Tnooz Q&A with co-founders Digvijay and Geet Bhalla.
Tell us how you founded the company, why and what made you decide to jump in and create the business.
Personally, we both are travel buffs and love traveling to different places around the world. However, from experience and observations we realised that people who want to book a complete holiday experience online find it cumbersome, involving sifting through multiple websites and sources.
They don’t have the right tools to book things at one go.
There are various websites which offer ready-made holiday packages, but there’s nothing that one can customise to fulfil their requirements with ease. Either it is a compromise by taking what is available, or in the offline world it is a long drawn back and forth process to finalise on the holiday experience which one seeks.
We were convinced that the market needed a simplified platform to plan and book a holiday experience in a few simple clicks. This is where the idea of HolidayMe was born.
HolidayMe allows you to book your customised holiday, including hotels, activities and transfers in a few simple clicks, and get confirmations in real time.
Our initial focus in the Middle East is to capture the growing opportunity of online travel in this market. The online travel sales is expected to reach $3 billion this year in the region and will continue to grow at a significant rate in the years to come. The market still continues to be dominated by offline players, and we are convinced that the transition to online travel is just a matter of time.
What is the size of the team, names of founders, management roles and key personnel?
We are a team of 85 people with 2 founders and offices across UAE, Saudi Arabia and India.
Geet Bhalla is the Co-Founder and CEO of HolidayMe and has a background in finance and banking technology with over 15 years of experience in building enterprise sales and marketing structures across the Middle East.
Digvijay Pratap is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of HolidayMe and has worked with multiple companies in the travel sector including Hoteltravel.com (acquired by Makemytrip.com), Thomas Cook, Aviva and Pathfinders, designing innovative products and e-commerce applications.
Other core team members include people who bring years of experience from the outbound holiday market with companies like Kuoni, Thomas Cook and other established online travel companies like Makemytrip and Yatra.
What are your funding arrangements?
After seeing the massive potential of the travel market in the Middle East, we pitched the idea of the travel portal to a prominent Saudi Investment group. They realised the potential in the idea, our team and the market. They were keen to partner with us and we have managed to raise $4 million through our association.
What is your estimation of market size?
The overall travel market size in the Middle East is estimated to be worth $10 billion at present with the online travel segment expected to grow exponentially in the years to come. A report from Google stated that around 39% of leisure travellers in the United Arab Emirates use the internet to plan a trip, however only 12% actually purchase online. With HolidayMe, we would like to bridge this gap.
Please describe your competition.
Although there are plenty of online travel portals in the market, which offer holiday itinerary bookings, standalone hotels and activity bookings, HolidayMe is the only portal in the Middle East which offers on-the-fly customisation of holiday packages in just a few clicks. In fact, there are a very few international travel portals offering the customised travel product worldwide.
What is your revenue model and strategy for profitability?
We will own the booking process of our customers willing to go on a holiday, across the multiple products they consume. Our initial period is focused on customer acquisition and fulfilment. The technology and operations base is set to meet these requirements. We see ourselves breaking even by early 2016 at the current levels.
What problem does the business solve?
A large number of people in the region still depend on their local travel agent for booking a holiday because no online travel portal gives them a platform to book a fully customizable holiday online in a simplified manner. The customer has to either choose from readymade fixed itineraries or call the OTA to buy a customised package. There are portals which help you to plan and create an itinerary for your destination, but they do not let you book the holiday from this platform as well.
This is where HolidayMe comes into the picture as it fills the gap and lets the user to not just plan his/her itinerary but also book his/her holiday package online instantly. While doing so, the customer can choose the experience he/she wishes, the budget allocation towards stay and activities. Finally he/she is ensured of a quality fulfilment experience.
How did the initial idea evolve and were there changes/any pivots along the way in the early stages?
The fundamental idea has remained unchanged. Our prime focus has always been to make the entire customisation process simple and easy for the end users.
A customer should be able to customise and book an itinerary with a few clicks, without any interference or external support. From our personal experience, we have learnt a lot about the demands of the users and we keep evolving to match their requirements, ensuring that we build a robust and friendly product for our customers.
Why should people or companies use the business?
There are many reasons, but the 3 main reasons are:
We offer the most convenient and quickest way to book a customized holiday itinerary online, with immediate confirmations.
HolidayMe is the only online travel portal offering such level of flexibility, ease of use and customization to a traveller from the Middle East region.
We are in the process of becoming a one stop solution for all travel needs in Middle East region; providing customised travel packages, hotels, activities, transfers. We are also adding flights to our product suite soon.
What is the strategy for raising awareness and the customer/user acquisition (apart from PR)?
We have a detailed marketing plan, targeting user acquisition for the upcoming months. Our marketing team is focusing on all the key marketing channels including online and offline marketing. Our online marketing team has already started campaigns for paid search, display and social media channels. We are also placing high focus on content marketing and have detailed plans for channels like SEO and Email marketing.
We would also start running ATL campaigns in next quarter to bring holiday seekers from the Middle East region to the online platform.
Where do you see the company in three years’ time and what specific challenges do you anticipate having to overcome?
We want HolidayMe to be the largest one-stop online shop for customers planning to book their holidays in the Middle East.
Over the next couple of years, we also want to extend it to a few other markets, but for the moment we are focussed on the job at hand.
We believe the challenge is one that of continuous innovation and enhancement, both in terms of offerings and customer experience. If we manage to do so, we do not need to worry about our competition.
What is wrong with the travel, tourism and hospitality industry that it requires a startup like yours to help it out?
There is a clear opportunity in the travel industry wherein users need a platform to not just plan their holiday but also customise it as per their requirements and book it instantly. Our aim is to bring users and their requirements to the focus and provide them with a portal that caters to their multiple needs coupled with a simplified user experience.
Which company would be the best fit to buy your startup?
Our entire focus right is to create the best possible product for our customers at the moment. We shall cross that bridge when we get there.
Describe your startup in three words.
Envision, Personalise, Travel.
Tnooz view:
The ease-of-use and full integration with TripAdvisor reviews make this a very appealing option for those seeking to book a more comprehensive tour package without being stuck in a set itinerary or with undesired activities.
Package holidays usually receive a bad rap, most especially given the general lack of flexibility as far as specifics. Travel startups have begun the process to create a digital workflow to customize these sorts of trips, and offer the cost savings that is the primary appeal to package holidays.
These sorts of tours are also immensely popular outside of North America, where there have long been discount bundlers selling package vacations on High Streets across Europe and in Asia. Bringing this popularity online is a huge opportunity, and it seems that HolidayMe is well-funded enough to make the move to dominate the market before others are successful.
However, there have been other startups, such as MyGola, that have attempted to offer an interface to customize tour packages and have since pivoted to a mobile-first strategy that mostly includes an in-destination planning offering.
The company has received $4 million from an unnamed Saudi investment group, and has already grown its staff to 85 workers – so clearly something is working in the business model, and the company is focusing on ramping up to accelerate growth.