Yesterday we had Pedro Jareño, entrepreneur of Minube.com. He started this website three years ago with the idea to create something different from the usual travel website. He felt that there are two different types of travellers; the tourist and the new traveler. Only once identified the differences between them he could make decisions on how to targeted the new traveler.
The tourist usually goes on holiday once a year in order to avoid his daily routine and buys a package from an agency. On the other side we have the new traveler, which starts his holidays from the exact moment he decides to plan the trip. He makes a lot of research on Internet, asks for opinions, and builds his own package by himself. The new traveler tends to use this approach not only for his long yearly holidays, but also for little special events (it might be a weekend, a single day, but even a single dinner).
So, on the basis of this new way of planning travels, what is the most important part?
Pedro noticed that the usually the new traveller goes trough the following steps for every trip: Inspiration, planning, comparison, booking, traveling, sharing memory. Then he realised that travel websites were mainly creating services for planning, comparison and booking and none of them addressed the inspiration part of the process. However, it is true that there are many websites where people can share their pictures and get inspired from other's (i.e. flickr, facebook, picasa, etc.), but none of them were directly connected to a travel website.
Now the problem is how to inspire new travellers?
Pedro identified some key factors that play a fundamental role:
Constant Innovation - Because people come again and again because they know there is always something new.
Passion - They have passion for travels and want to interact with people who have the same passion.
Humanisation - Nowadays people are real. They no longer don't hide behind a nickname/avatar.
Honesty - Being someone else or publishing fake contents will eventually backfire.
Differentiation - Be unique (type of products, the way you communicate, branding, etc.)
Focus - Do not broaden to much your scope. Do little but do it well.
Pedro also explained what he did to create network effect. He followed several activities in different directions in order to promote his website. Among them he said that he listens his customers and let them decide in what direction the website should go. Even though I generally agree on this approach, I would not follow strictly the suggestions of minube's customers. For instance in marketing there is a school of thought that believes on the fact that customers don't really know what they want. So, should you always listen your customers?
Thank you Pedro for your speech. I wish you the best of luck for Minube's future!
Interesting how Minube.com is about creating a platform, as was Chicisimo, but still Jorge Mata pretty much went in an opposite direction: "forget about platforms, build an application to address a specific solution".
ReplyDeleteI wonder who's right. I see that platforms are more difficult to monetize but if you do manage to hit the right spot, I think success will be of a much bigger dimension.