Holiday Marketplace TransferTravel – The Future Of Travel Booking?

Tell us a bit about TransferTravel – how would you describe it in 50 words?

TransferTravel is the dedicated peer-to-peer travel marketplace for pre-booked and unwanted travel plans. The platform allows individuals to sell their unwanted travel that they can no longer use for free whilst allowing others to buy a great last minute travel at amazing prices!

How did you discover the need for TransferTravel? What real life problem are you solving?
My background is in online marketing but I discovered the need for the platform out of a personal experience:

I had a holiday to Dubai booked, and I planned to go with my girlfriend at that time. Unfortunately, we broke up just 8 weeks before we were due to fly – I was left with a broken heart plus a holiday that I didn’t really want to go on anymore. Because I had pre-booked it at the best rate, it was a non refundable I couldn’t cancel. Instead of trying to get some of my money back I though I may as well try and sell it so someone else could make use of the holiday. I posted it on my Facebook page and also listed it on a classified listing site but I was actually surprised how many other people where selling their unwanted travel plans! Though I didn’t actually manage to sell mine, I was wondering how many people knew that they could buy other people’s holidays.

I started looking into the whole industry further and realised that globally this was a big market: Forbes had written an article on the pre booked, unused hotel industry and stated that this was a $8 billion a year industry! This led me to search for a dedicated site that allowed people to buy and sell their travel plans – I found 1000’s of listings on classified sites but not one that was dedicated just to unwanted travel.

I set up TransferTravel to give individuals the chance to buy and sell all their types of travel in one online marketplace. Apart from that we actively market everyone’s listings to encourage buyers to visit the site – just like a travel booking site.

With people selling their pre-booked holidays on Ebay & Gumtree – how do you make sure you don’t get lost in the shuffle?

Ebay and Gumtree are some of the best classified listings sites out there but no one really goes there to buy flights, holidays or hotels, especially other people’s – it’s just not credible enough. For buyers, we are creating a true last minute booking site, where people can search for listings leaving in a shorter time period. Let’s say they know Spain is where they want to go, but they are open to departure airports & time they want to spend there: TransferTravel will allow buyers to search for a great deal but also get ideas of what’s available at discounted rates!

From a seller’s point of view, we actually go out and market their travel plans. So if you list your flight, holiday or hotel we then share it on our social media sites plus send out the latest offers to our database of people who are looking for a travel deal.

We are creating a true market place for unwanted travel plans so getting lost in the shuffle won’t be an issue when we are dedicated to sell your travel for you. We have people coming to our site everyday looking for their next holiday or booking – and that’s all they see. The seller’s items don’t get lost or mixed up with unrelated categories like they would on other generic classified listing sites.

What are your plans for the near future? And how do you plan to achieve them?

We have huge plans! We are currently working on a mobile app, a new version of the site will be available towards the end of the year  – and it will have some pretty cool features to allow sellers & buyers to get the most out of the site and maximise the chances of selling their travel.

TransferTravel is constantly growing as a company and we are always looking for the best and most talented staff in our UK and US offices. We also experience great support from our partner businesses and as a startup we have surrounded ourselves with both great people and companies who share our vision!

7 years from now: Where do you see your startup? How will it have changed the world?

I know it’s easy to say the old cliché that we will be the biggest online booking classified site for pre-booked and unwanted travel along with changing the way the world books their travel but we will and there is such potential in the industry to back that up. We know the pre-booked and unused travel market is going to exceed $8 billion a year purely down to the fact that the whole online travel market is growing every year. We are the only true dedicated travel marketplace and we think we can make it to the top. We don’t want to complicate things but simplify them and create a central place for buyers and sellers that benefits both. You can already see this concept working when it comes to selling unwanted concert tickets.

The last minute booking industry is a massive market and as a consumer to be able to find last minute travel options available at a hugely discounted price is a no brainer! We already have been described as a disrupter, creating this true peer to peer transfer service so I think there’s a good chance that we’ll be a big part of how people buy travel in the future.

What were the biggest challenges you faced building your startup?

There were a couple of major challenges around launching the company.

Firstly, I think it was deciding on how the initial site should be built. We’re sitting between the two categories of a classified listing site and a travel booking site. We had to make sure that from a seller’s point of view we create a simple listing site that is easy to use. From a buyer’s point of view it’s different again as we want to give them the experience of a travel booking site. They should be able to search for the type of travel they’re after, then break it down again to location and then down to departure times until they find their perfect last minute holiday.

Secondly and most importantly was inventory. The whole concept of selling your pre-booked and unwanted travel is still very new and most people  don’t even realise this is something you can actually do. This is why a major part of our marketing strategy is to make this educational process happen so we can raise awareness about transferring your holiday, flight or hotel booking to someone else.

In what ways do you measure your success and how do you make sure you don’t lose track?

We have a clear strategy that we work on, in both the – short and long term. TransferTravel adds a whole new twist in the massive online travel industry so we can only measure the success on the goals we set ourselves but also on how successful the site becomes. 6 months before we launched the first version of our site we spent our time just testing ideas and seeing what worked. This is how we came up with the impression that with a classified style the platform seemed to work best for the early stages while we grow our listings to a level where we can then turn the site into more of a booking style site.

It’s easier to go off track and focus on other areas based around travel or sectors but staying focussed on why we set the site up in the beginning and what purpose is serves enables us to stay on track.

What do you look for in team members?

We are definitely a vibrant and bubbly team, and slightly crazy at times so all members of our team need to be with us for a good time as well as hard work. We all sit in an open plan office regardless of title and we have our little bell that we ring when something cool happens whether we have reached a milestone with social followers, had some great feedback or achieved something significant within the company!

We are a forward thinking tech company, which means that ideas and being proactive is a massive part of our culture. Everyone is part of the team & business, so everyone should be able to share ideas no matter if they’re good or bad. Sharing ideas benefits everyone – from our customers to team itself.

Why would a talent join your team?

Someone would join us because we complement each other, I think. We are a small but rapidly growing team with big plans and huge opportunities to create a game changer in the travel market! Who wouldn’t want to work with us? 😉

What was your most memorable moment so far?

I remember that very well! We had only been going with TransferTravel a couple of weeks and we had recently introduced live chat onto our site. Almost immediately we got a notification that a live chat had started and it was someone asking about the registration process! We all ran round to Sarah’s computer who was dealing with the chat at the time, it was exciting as we had our first live chat customer who needed our support! Once Sarah had dealt with the customer’s questions the customer ranked the chat as “positive”. We all hi-fived as it was a true milestone moment at the time. It was a small thing but proved what we had set up was working and the chat allowed us to deliver a better customer experience!

What advice would you give fellow founders for their startup?

It’s all about the vision, research and believing that what you have is a great idea! For me this was a simple idea that came from a not so pleasant experience with a break up, but it enabled me as an online marketeer to create something that would have solved my issue of selling my previous travel plans and soon will help hundreds of thousands of other people in a similar position.

I remember having sleepless nights thinking that this is a pretty simple idea but no one seems to be in this marketplace doing a great job. Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest but it’s the planning and taking action to make things happen. You can’t sit around waiting for everything to be perfect, you have to make things happen and get the ball rolling. Only then will you know what’s working or not and what you can change to keep the propensity of what you’re trying to achieve.

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