Page 4 - The 10 Most Innovative Startups in Travel 2019

EDITOR’S NOTE

ravel startups are not as easy as a high
proportion of the wider start-up world
Tseem to think they are - and that’s
a bit of a problem. And it’s also time for a
reality check. The wonderfully optimistic
world of Silicon Valley (and its city clones
dotted around the world) has triggered a
wave of businesses that have seen travel
as being ripe for “disruption”. This is great,
of course - so-called disruption keeps an
industry on its toes and (hopefully) ensures
those maintaining the status quo evolve to
meet new challenges and opportunities for
their users and partners. But the problem
with the travel industry is that it isn’t
particularly easy to gain any kind foothold to
the extent that it makes people elsewhere
sit up and listen.

Paul Graham’s (in) famous essay talks
about the life cycle of establishing
and maintaining a startup, and is seen
by many as the blueprint for any new,
tech-based business. Much of it makes
perfect sense, and shouldn’t be ignored. But
where it falls down in relation to the issues
facing startups in the travel sector is in the
first row.

TRAVEL Where many travel startups fail is when
they consider “what is missing in the
world”, often basing an entire business
STARTUPS: on a personal experience they had when
travelling (hey, we ALL have problems with

the barriers to entry are our OWN experiences). But this does not
necessarily mean there is a problem that
very low, but the barriers to requires “fixing” that can achieve some
semblance of scale.
disruption are high! B2C travel startups need volume to make

money, there’s no doubt at all about that,