HipWay and HipClub: launching, receiving investments, drawing of 37 books REWORK

On April 15, we talked about the launch of the unusual travel directory HipWay in this post . As promised, we will tell about the future of HipWay, and about the new service - HIPCLUB .



During the time elapsed from the previous post, events developed rapidly. The most important news is that HipWay has managed to attract investment. It was a long and complicated process, but in the end a pool was formed of several investors from America and Europe, who invested more than five hundred thousand dollars in the project.



Under the cut, we tell everything in more detail, as well as play 37 REWORK books among people who have registered for the new service through the link from Habrahabr.



One of the main lessons is that it turned out that we will not work with Russian venture capital investors, since they do not follow the idea of ​​venture financing as such, and say phrases like “we don’t give money if you are going to spend them on advertising” or want to get 65% business for $ 100 thousand, and so on. Western investors, on the other hand, are ready to invest only in tracing paper of world business models known to them. So if you raise money, immediately think up a brand for yourself - “We are Russian Groupon”, “We are Russian Expedia”, and success will be much more likely.

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It so happened that HipWay is not at all like any Western counterpart, and we spent several months proving that the model is viable. Then we found the “original” exit. On April 15, we launched HipWay in test mode, as a closed site with registration, by invitation only. For HipWay, this made little sense, just a traffic limiter during testing, but it turned out that closed travel-clubs are one of the hottest topics on the global Internet. The inventor of the model, the French company Voyage Prive, is growing hundreds of percent a year, and already has several clones. Thus, along with the development of HipWay, we appropriated the Russian Voyage Prive brand, and began to make HIPCLUB. Investors immediately said, “Well, this is quite another matter” :) and the issue of attracting money began to be solved much more positively.







What is a closed travel club? You probably know KupiVIP, which sells all sorts of Prada and Ed Hardy with big discounts? So this is the same idea implemented in the field of travel. The user receives every week 5-8 offers from hotels and tour operators at a discount of 30 to 70%, each offer is available for 4-10 days. That's the whole idea.



Why does this work? All hotels have a load of less than 100% and this is due to both competition and demand fluctuations. For example, Moscow hotels are half empty on weekends, and Moscow region - on weekdays. In Turkey, bad loading in late autumn, and in the Maldives - in the summer. At the same time, distributing discounts in the open is not very profitable, because there are customers who are willing to pay and pay the full cost and giving them a discount is a loss of money. Travel Club allows hotels to “drain” excess rooms to club members with discounts up to 70%, while continuing to receive the full cost of all the rest. The hotels are delighted, the club members are delighted, everyone loves each other and universal happiness comes.



I anticipate questions about why registration and games are closed. In this model, closeness is required legally - the sale in the club is called “private sale” (private sale), which cannot be published on the public site, because then it will become a “public sale” (public sale), which will not allow the hotel to give big discounts , as he has agreements with all sorts of hotels.com to provide them with the “best publicly available price.”



Come and see. We are pleased to answer questions about the project and listen to feedback. With great interest we will listen to ideas about attracting new members to the club.



You can register via the link http://hipclub.ru/habr



Among those who have registered by the link, we will play 37 books of REWORK of the company “ 37 Signals ” of the publishing house Mann, Ivanov and Ferber. HipClub sponsored the publication of this book. The book will get 37 randomly selected from registered by the link. You will receive an email.