Travark
The social travel shop that simplifies group bookings.
- Location
- Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
Categories: Travel, Leisure & Sport Mixed Digital/Non-Digital B2C
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Investment
sought: - £50,000
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Equity
offered: - 10.00%
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Investment
amount: - £56,170
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Valuation
(pre-money): - £450,000
Team
-
CEO
Idea
Introduction
Travark is a socially-oriented, web-based holiday and travel brokerage website where people can research, plan, book and share their holiday experiences with family and friends.
We aim to take the hassle, risk and stress out of planning and booking a group trip, and replace it with a fun, engaging experience that provides peace-of-mind, becomes an indispensable resource hub that will create a happy, loyal customer base.
We do this bringing together the most enjoyable aspects of social networking, the most powerful aspects of researching and shopping for holidays online, whilst being underpinned by the same values of comfort, confidence and reliability experienced when booking through a high-street agent.
The emphasis with Travark is on simplicity, comfort and having fun.
Intended impact
The timing for Travark is absolutely perfect given current market trends.
The travel industry is growing online. In general, the travel industry is growing, particularly with the help of emerging international markets. However, online growth is outstripping the high street which is actually shrinking. With the development of technology and the growth of users' understanding of it, people at all levels and of all ages are becoming more familiar and comfortable with making their arrangements in the online/digital domain.
Users are increasingly turning to mobile devices for booking flights, hotels and holidays. The increasing penetration and dependency of mobile technology (primarily smart phones and tablets) will be a core part of Travark's offering. It will be easy to use your mobile device with your Travark account.
We don't think any online competitor offers such a rich, joined-up social group experience. At present, one of the only ways people can organise a trip is through a social media site such as Facebook. Whilst this enables some basic level of communication amongst the group, there is no functionality that enables the group to actually plan, organise, manage then book. The set of tools is actually incredibly basic as is only intended, in that respect, to be a discussion forum.
All the above account for why there has never been a better time to bring group bookings online and to market.
Our Solution - A socially-oriented, web-based holiday and travel brokerage website where people can:
INVITE. Friends & Family.
PLAN. In realtime, location, flights, budget & more.
BOOK. Great deals with NO multiple site searches.
SHARE. With the rest of the World.
Substantial accomplishments to date
Secured £35,000 through friends and family.
Built an awesome team from, copy writers to developers.
Partnered with Multicom, a leading UK travel-based internet booking engine.
Main site is almost complete and we're aiming for an open Beta launch of April 2014.
Monetisation strategy
Travark is an online travel agent. It will make its money primarily through the commission earned by reselling third-party holidays and services.
Core set of objectives:
1. BRAND - Establish a powerful identity. Create a brand image and proposition that is unique, memorable, intriguing and very desirable.
2. SERVICE - Create a useful an indispensible tool. Develop a website and, as a secondary priority, mobile applications that provide a unique, feature rich, fun and empowering brand experience where users can plan, organise, book and share holiday experiences.
3. PRODUCT - Provide products that people will want. Establish relationships with appropriate partners to generate revenue by providing their products through the Travark site; in the main holidays, flights and accommodation. The real power of Travark will be in bringing, to one accessible place, real-time automation and management of the holiday planning and booking process, especially for group bookings. Negotiate deals that represent value for money for the user and that yield viable revenues.
4. MEMBERS - Attract and build a large member base.
Through a cohesive marketing strategy, generate registered members. Memberships are planned to be free. The more members the site has the more tangible negotiating power it will have with product and service partners.
5. REVENUE STREAMS - Open multiple channels for income generation. Create and develop product and service streams that will generate growing revenue. Primarily we expect this to come from commission for reselling travel and holiday products (on average 10-20%), secondarily from advertising, third-party site click-through/links and, lastly, bolt-on added value feature fees paid for directly by members.
6. EXPANSION - When it's making money, grow the business territorially. Initially the site will be a UK-only service, however, once we prove the business model works in one territory it will be rolled-out to other countries using the same web infrastructure.
Use of proceeds
We intend to use the proceeds of this investment round for:
25% - Developers - Final (Beta) development and launch
25% - Marketing - Phase 1
50% - Mobile App Development - Phase 2
Market
Target market
Travark will, primarily, need to concentrate on the audiences that are most likely to make best use of the Travark site's features and therefore find it most useful in meeting their needs. As a startup, we must concentrate on the target audience(s) most likely to deliver the most to Travark.
Referring to the above, the obvious answer is to concentrate, initially, on groups. After all, Travark was conceived firstly to solve the difficulties associated with planning and making group bookings, and secondly as a planning and social sharing tool. Whether the groups are male, female or mixed is arguably irrelevant. Age is likely to be more relevant, purely from a "likeliness to book online" point of view, with older people being less likely to do so. However, Travark is about making it easy to bring group bookings together so, to a certain degree, age is not overly important in terms of who we concentrate on; Travark is, after all, for everyone.
There is one very important aspect to remember. We do not have to appeal to everyone in the group to get the group's business. We have only to get the person starting the process of the holiday booking to instigate that through Travark. We will refer to them as The Initiator; someone who will be male or female and aged 16 - 60. Over the age of 60, we think it's going to be more likely that a younger person in the group will take responsibility for kick-starting the holiday booking process.
Given all the above considerations, Travark will focus its initial efforts on appealing to the individual, or The Initiator, who is responsible for coordinating a group booking.
Characteristics of target market
Annually, the online travel and unmanaged leisure industry is worth $374 billion globally; 38. 9% of the overall travel sector and growing by 8 – 10% year-on-year. $26 billion of this is spent in the UK with over 74% of all bookings now made online.
With retail dominance in this sector increasingly in decline, we feel there is a great opportunity to be the best solution for group holiday bookings, and more. Taking into account the scalability of an online business model, once proven in one country, it should become much easier to roll out to further countries.
Remember, this is just the present market estimate for people booking online and online bookings are growing with exponential speed, year on year, helped along by mobile devices and a more web-savvy, value-hungry audience.
Marketing strategy
Travarks marketing will be focused around efficient, lower-cost methods for generating site traffic. Some advertising will be necessary but the bulk of the marketing budget would be used on direct marketing.
PPC (Pay Per Click).
Target specific group orientated demographics through search engine advertising.
Direct Marketing.
More personable approach allowing us to make our perspective customers feel special.
SEO & Link Building.
Retain a supplier for the maximisation of Travark’s organic search engine ranking for all keywords.
Social Media.
Target specific groups of people based on travel habits, interests and social standing.
Affiliates.
Link up with companies that will complement our offering and open up new windows of opportunities.
Guerilla Marketing.
A series of low-cost but brilliant and effective “stunts” to generate publicity.
Competition strategy
We think Travark has all of the strengths it needs to succeed, as an operational team and in terms of the proposition it will bring to the marketplace. We have a management team of key experts spanning each of the business functions critical to our business success.
We are confident our proposition is unique, rich and will offer customers not only the best online holiday planning experience, but the best way of booking a holiday - particularly for groups of people. A decent launch and year one marketing budget will be key to Travark becoming quickly established as the market-leading brand while generating rapid and substantial returns.
We aim to achieve a competitive edge by providing an experience that is complex but not complicated. It will be convenient and easy to access, wherever the user happens to be and whatever device they are using. Above all else, Travark plans to make the process of pulling together travel components and their trip party stress-free, empowered and fun.
We want to be an indispensable aid for the trip group; the first place they come to, a place they never want to leave and somewhere they want all their friends to come and join them. Core anticipated strengths:
1. Expert management team - Comprises of experts in business, travel, marketing, design and web development.
2. 1st to Market - With most recognised and desired brand.
3. The best of both worlds - High Street & Online combined.
4. Lower operating costs - Bringing better value.
5. Ease of use - It does the hard work for you. 6. Indispensable toolkit - Available anywhere.
7. Travark is brilliantly unique - Fun & rewarding interaction.
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