This Is How TravelTechJob Manages To Stay Ahead In A Niche Market

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Looking for a new opportunity in the travel tech sector? TravelTechJob is a platform fully dedicated to careers in travel tech. CEO & Founder Filipa Manita on what differentiates her platform from others:

What inspired you to create the TravelTechJob? How did it all start?

Having worked in a few companies in the travel industry, I managed to gather a considerable network that would frequently ask me to share career opportunities on my personal social media channels. I noticed that this was in line with a problem I faced myself when I was screening the main job platforms for opportunities in the travel industry – it seemed that many of them had too many different categories to filter the result correctly. I would get only one in ten jobs that would actually be considered travel tech, most of them were catering related.

From this point on, I worked on creating a community of people and unite them on the same platform. One of my former colleagues joined me in doing this as he identified with my vision. We teamed up to build the platform based on feedback from the community.

What makes TravelTechJob stand out from the crowd? What is the key differentiator?

We’re focusing on one niche only, travel tech. Though you might think this niche is too small to create an entire platform around, it includes companies with more than 10,000 employees.

Our competitors, of course, include some of the opportunities we offer but they are usually the same big players with big recruitment budgets. Additionally, due to a large number of categories offered, their filtering system does not work properly. We aim to make the search for a new job as precise as possible while helping companies the talent they’re looking for – people who help them grow.

Currently, you cover 10 European countries with TravelTechJob. Do you see any differences between the requirements or positions that are seeking to be filled?

There are some job market trends that companies from specific cities tend to follow more than others. For example, London-based companies lean more toward flexible schedules or working remotely. In travel tech specifically, we see some traits that are more common in general, independent of their physical location. Some of these traits include transparency in the recruitment process, company culture, and personal development opportunities.

What is the biggest challenge that your company has faced so far and which were your biggest learning points?

Execution and thinking ahead. While we know it’s important to keep pushing to keep momentum and take leverage of every single opportunity, it’s also crucial that we take the time to analyze our data and establish our milestones for the future.

I think the biggest learning point is in finding the balance to do this. Knowing that we need to make sure our vision is aligned and trusting each other to meet the check-points we established as a team is a big factor for success.

The travel industry is very competitive and experiencing many innovations in recent years. From your perspective, what will it take for companies to stay on top of their game?

Every day, we see new startups and disruptive innovations arise in the travel industry – but only a few of them succeed in such a competitive market. We believe that the team behind a project is a crucial factor for building a successful company, and hiring only the best talent will give companies a competitive advantage. Those companies, that manage to attract the best talent and retain them within a culture of learning will take the lead.

What do you wish for in improving the European startup ecosystem?

If you’re not in London or Berlin you will have a hard time finding the best types of resources. It makes maintaining the same growth rates much more challenging than when you can draw from a big(ger) network which will ultimately offer more opportunities – just think about the incubators or accelerators available. From my perspective, the European startup hubs should focus on very specific industries, such as travel, and make sure they are connected.

What’s next for TravelTechJob?

At the moment, we’re working on optimizing our product for our community. We are constantly talking to our members to understand what it is that is important to them in order to make TravelTechJob the number one platform they visit when looking for a new opportunity.

A bit further down the road, we’re planning to launch features for companies which include tailor-made marketing campaigns with a supercharged social reach and better retargeting to match with the relevant talent. We’ll also continue to collect feedback to come up with case studies and analyze what works best for each side.

What’s one piece of advice you can give to fellow founders for their startup?

The thing that has helped us the most is the fact that we created a community before anything else. It’s a lot easier to understand your potential customer, build funnels and create personas when you already have some data to work on.

Plus, much of the effort on getting up and running is based on relationships, from sales to SEO, which means that having a community where you can tap into to validate your idea and feedback is essential when starting out.

 

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