“Wild” tourism as the highest gradation of the traveler, or for whom Tourista.me was created
I am a traveler. Not just a vacationer, who brings a passport and money to a travel agency once or twice a year, chooses some All-Inclusive-tour and then according to the standard scheme: duty-free, a huge amount of booze as a “cure for aerophobia”, a riot on the plane (optional if the courage will go), transfer, hotel and so on. It’s not interesting to me, I will not throw stones at lovers of such leisure activities - everyone makes their own choices, but I don’t like to use the services of tour operators. Do not want and that's it. Not because I do not trust them, but rather because they (moreover, for my money) deprive me of 50% of the high of the trip, which for me begins long before the trip or the flight itself.
Another trip for me is, above all, data mining and careful planning, if the route is new. If a well-known and all the preliminary work has been done (there is a multi-schengen in the passport, andfresh horses are waiting for the pass, the beloved low-cost airline threw prices below nowhere), then the element of spontaneity, by contrast, can bring a special charm to the journey. In general, the essence is simple - I do everything myself - I buy tickets myself, book a hotel or arrange for myself something different (couchsurfing, for example, is quite a suitable way), I plan my own schedule of movements, and decide myself, it's time for me to go home or, after all, after two weeks of wandering, from Lisbon to Basel, where Ryanair offers me today to fly for 9 euros.
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It makes no sense to list where I have already been, it’s easier to name the places you have not reached yet. But the fact that the free tourist will always have significantly more opportunities than the organized one is a fact.
The only thing that I have always lacked in such a rest for the feeling of its perfection, and in what I could envy the buyer of the tour, is the deep knowledge about the place of stay, which can be provided only by a qualified guide or a local resident, if, of course, I can fully find with him mutual language. Guidebooks, which today are full and in the form of the same mobile applications - all this is certainly good, but there is no substitute for a lively dialogue and quick answers to questions arising in the course of the story.
But once I was lucky - after seeing that the tourists had obviously lost something, and having heard the Russian language, in Florence, a Russian woman offered her help to her friends, who, according to her, had lived there for over 20 years. The woman turned out to be extremely educated and erudite - for some half an hour she told us about this beautiful city as much as new as the four of us, on the eve of having shoveled a bunch of guidebooks and other literature, did not know totally.
As is often the case, the underlying lack was transformed into an idea - the idea of creating a service for people just like us (of course, I am not alone in my hobby - there are a lot of us, free travelers. And acquaintances, and just like-minded people). And the meeting in Tuscany suggested the idea that such Russian-speaking guides throughout Europe (and indeed in the world) probably live in numbers. Most of them will be happy to share their knowledge and local life hacks with their former compatriots, while receiving the opportunity to earn extra money.
Without immediately raising the world market (everything is ahead, but you should not overestimate your own strength), we started building a service for Russian-speaking tourists and guides, which would simultaneously become a convenient B2C platform for some and a functional B2B center for others.
As a result, Tourista.me appeared - a platform for caring people. Those who are traveling, want to "live" a particular country from the inside, feel the spirit of places and routes, and not just "run" on the list of attractions. And those who have something to tell and something to surprise.
Our goal is to connect travelers and guides, to help the first to visit interesting places, and the second to show these places. Practice shows that all the most interesting is far beyond the usual guidebooks and tourist avenues.
Rome tram tour, truffle hunting, or a VIP tour of Italy on a Lamborghini, Ferrari or Ducati - there is entertainment for every taste and budget. The number of excursions and their variety is constantly growing - hardly anywhere else you will find a tour of the Parisian dungeons or a trip tour of the cafes of Amsterdam. (We do not have such excursions yet, but it all depends on the imagination and possibilities of the guide). The main thing is that there is such a potential.
The main focus is on unique excursions with deep immersion in the culture of the country, a creative approach of the guide to his work, argued by high competition - already at this initial stage, we have dozens of qualified guides working throughout Europe. The target audience is young travelers with a multiple Schengen visa who plan their trip themselves.
Somehow everything is rosy and unproven, right? Let's turn to the dry statistics. 18.3 million Russian tourists left the country in 2013 (Rosstat) with an increase of 19.3%. And they spend 12% of all the money on excursions (ATOUT, 2012). According to the EU states, in 2012 in Russia, 2.9 million Schengen multiple-entry visas were issued (the refusal is 0.9%), 494 thousand in Ukraine (2% refusal) and 326 thousand (0.5% refusal) in Belarus.
And the market is growing very fast due to competing low-cost airlines, flooding the potential client with offers, low percentage of visa refusals and a declining price on average from year to year.
Of course, we are equaling the leaders (airBnB.com, for example), but we still see competitors in the Russian-language marketplace (excursiopedia.com, tripster.ru).
Our goal is to make a product that will not be a simple catalog of excursions, but a whole platform for communication between local and tourists, as CouchSurfing.org does.
In two months of work, 220 new excursions appeared on the site, mainly in Italy for Russian speakers, and later excursions in Spain and Holland were added. The first successful orders have been sent (more than 50 have been fulfilled so far), there is good traffic from search engines.
We attract guides through forums, blogs, social networks, both specialized, for tourists and guides, as well as regular, personal sites of guides. We write letters, we invite you to cooperate.
What do we need investments for? We are not inclined to underestimate the market - there is always competition and it is quite high. But you need to reach the proper level and strive for victory))) Our next steps towards it (with your financial help):
1. SEO optimization and promotion.
2. Contextual advertising (Yandex.Direct and Google AdWords).
3. SMM promotion (Facebook, Vkontakte).
4. Salaries of full-time developer and copywriter.
5. Promotional video.
6. Creation of mobile applications for iOS and Android.
About the author: Alexander Yaremchuk is the founder of Tourista.me, a PHP and iOS developer, (Toptal.com, Petrosoft Inc., FindMySong.com, PrimeContext.ru, Ownermetric.com).
We (the project team) certainly believe in the success of crowdfunding and the potential of VCStart, where we are looking for funding, and in the search for funds we mainly count on the help of microinvestors. But we ourselves also try not to lose time for nothing. Recently, we took part in the largest startup conference in Ukraine (IDCEE), in which we participated for free, hitting the number of the most interesting startups of the Tech4UA foundation. We got acquainted with the mass of future partners and investors, got a good feedback and evaluation of the project idea. And although we were not called to pitch the scene(a thousand devils) , this did not prevent us from finding two potential investors in two days of the conference, with whom we are now continuing negotiations. We invite you to also take part in our project in this capacity. You can buy a stake in Tourista.me on the VCStart.com collective investment platform .
Another trip for me is, above all, data mining and careful planning, if the route is new. If a well-known and all the preliminary work has been done (there is a multi-schengen in the passport, and
')
It makes no sense to list where I have already been, it’s easier to name the places you have not reached yet. But the fact that the free tourist will always have significantly more opportunities than the organized one is a fact.
The only thing that I have always lacked in such a rest for the feeling of its perfection, and in what I could envy the buyer of the tour, is the deep knowledge about the place of stay, which can be provided only by a qualified guide or a local resident, if, of course, I can fully find with him mutual language. Guidebooks, which today are full and in the form of the same mobile applications - all this is certainly good, but there is no substitute for a lively dialogue and quick answers to questions arising in the course of the story.
But once I was lucky - after seeing that the tourists had obviously lost something, and having heard the Russian language, in Florence, a Russian woman offered her help to her friends, who, according to her, had lived there for over 20 years. The woman turned out to be extremely educated and erudite - for some half an hour she told us about this beautiful city as much as new as the four of us, on the eve of having shoveled a bunch of guidebooks and other literature, did not know totally.
As is often the case, the underlying lack was transformed into an idea - the idea of creating a service for people just like us (of course, I am not alone in my hobby - there are a lot of us, free travelers. And acquaintances, and just like-minded people). And the meeting in Tuscany suggested the idea that such Russian-speaking guides throughout Europe (and indeed in the world) probably live in numbers. Most of them will be happy to share their knowledge and local life hacks with their former compatriots, while receiving the opportunity to earn extra money.
From idea to business
Without immediately raising the world market (everything is ahead, but you should not overestimate your own strength), we started building a service for Russian-speaking tourists and guides, which would simultaneously become a convenient B2C platform for some and a functional B2B center for others.
As a result, Tourista.me appeared - a platform for caring people. Those who are traveling, want to "live" a particular country from the inside, feel the spirit of places and routes, and not just "run" on the list of attractions. And those who have something to tell and something to surprise.
Our goal is to connect travelers and guides, to help the first to visit interesting places, and the second to show these places. Practice shows that all the most interesting is far beyond the usual guidebooks and tourist avenues.
Rome tram tour, truffle hunting, or a VIP tour of Italy on a Lamborghini, Ferrari or Ducati - there is entertainment for every taste and budget. The number of excursions and their variety is constantly growing - hardly anywhere else you will find a tour of the Parisian dungeons or a trip tour of the cafes of Amsterdam. (We do not have such excursions yet, but it all depends on the imagination and possibilities of the guide). The main thing is that there is such a potential.
The main focus is on unique excursions with deep immersion in the culture of the country, a creative approach of the guide to his work, argued by high competition - already at this initial stage, we have dozens of qualified guides working throughout Europe. The target audience is young travelers with a multiple Schengen visa who plan their trip themselves.
Market and competitors
Somehow everything is rosy and unproven, right? Let's turn to the dry statistics. 18.3 million Russian tourists left the country in 2013 (Rosstat) with an increase of 19.3%. And they spend 12% of all the money on excursions (ATOUT, 2012). According to the EU states, in 2012 in Russia, 2.9 million Schengen multiple-entry visas were issued (the refusal is 0.9%), 494 thousand in Ukraine (2% refusal) and 326 thousand (0.5% refusal) in Belarus.
And the market is growing very fast due to competing low-cost airlines, flooding the potential client with offers, low percentage of visa refusals and a declining price on average from year to year.
Of course, we are equaling the leaders (airBnB.com, for example), but we still see competitors in the Russian-language marketplace (excursiopedia.com, tripster.ru).
Our goal is to make a product that will not be a simple catalog of excursions, but a whole platform for communication between local and tourists, as CouchSurfing.org does.
Start and first results
In two months of work, 220 new excursions appeared on the site, mainly in Italy for Russian speakers, and later excursions in Spain and Holland were added. The first successful orders have been sent (more than 50 have been fulfilled so far), there is good traffic from search engines.
We attract guides through forums, blogs, social networks, both specialized, for tourists and guides, as well as regular, personal sites of guides. We write letters, we invite you to cooperate.
Search for investments and goals
What do we need investments for? We are not inclined to underestimate the market - there is always competition and it is quite high. But you need to reach the proper level and strive for victory))) Our next steps towards it (with your financial help):
1. SEO optimization and promotion.
2. Contextual advertising (Yandex.Direct and Google AdWords).
3. SMM promotion (Facebook, Vkontakte).
4. Salaries of full-time developer and copywriter.
5. Promotional video.
6. Creation of mobile applications for iOS and Android.
About the author: Alexander Yaremchuk is the founder of Tourista.me, a PHP and iOS developer, (Toptal.com, Petrosoft Inc., FindMySong.com, PrimeContext.ru, Ownermetric.com).We (the project team) certainly believe in the success of crowdfunding and the potential of VCStart, where we are looking for funding, and in the search for funds we mainly count on the help of microinvestors. But we ourselves also try not to lose time for nothing. Recently, we took part in the largest startup conference in Ukraine (IDCEE), in which we participated for free, hitting the number of the most interesting startups of the Tech4UA foundation. We got acquainted with the mass of future partners and investors, got a good feedback and evaluation of the project idea. And although we were not called to pitch the scene
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/239913/
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