13 Jul 09
Sourcing Tours & Activities companies
We are currently sourcing companies offering tours & activities in the Top 20 travel destinations of the world, as well as in Switzerland, Austria & Germany (strengthening the homebase…). The idea behind this acquisition strategy is to build a strong local network here in the German speaking countries, where the competition is weak (so far) and where we are rooted and thus have good access to suppliers and distributors alike. On the other hand we need to serve potential B2B partners in the travel space (Online Travel Agents, Travel Communities etc.) from the first second, providing them with appropriate content in the destinations, they make most money in. The resulting list of target destinations is compiled on our whiteboard, which you can see here:
Each day we are working ourselves further down the list, sourcing dozens of potential customers in each of the places listed above. Currently, we have covered central Switzerland, London, Vienna, Prague, Paris and some Berlin. Following a couple of basic learnings we have made already along the way of this first global sourcing effort:
- The competition only covers the tip of the iceberg using their “hand-picked tours” approach: There is plenty more colorful fish in the ocean, which might not fit their mainstream approach, is very interesting nonetheless!
- The Long Tail in Tours & Activities is not as obscure as you might think: Although some offers are definitely niche content, there are professionals focussing on these very specific services, building a reputation and brand around it. For instance in the field of biking tours a very vivid, professional and interconnected scene has emerged (see for instance Pedal Power in Vienna)
- The market cries for a better standard: Apart from one or two companies and its affiliates, there are just one million separate websites that all look different and offer different functionality. As a customer, you have no idea where to start and need to apply some really hardcore tricks on the search engine (or knowledge of the location) to get to interesting content.
So far a first oversight…more updates, as soon as the sourcing is further down the road…
2 Comments
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Bonjour,
Just discover your website and project.
Congrat.
You have a good potential for the Travel Long train
Hope you will put more tours for France and Provence area.
Best regards
Claude
Hi Claude,
thanks for your comment. We will make sure to include a lot of tours in France, particularly in Provence :-)
Cheers,
Johannes