Business description :
Tripwolf is a worlwild travel guide ; which works with online model.
The activity consists of transmitting many different information on travel, which can be used specifically by globe travellers.
Informations come from worldwild travellers who can provide advices, informations on the different places they know. And also suppliers like hotels, airline companies, or tourism offices can be visible.
There is also a browser which analyzes and offers the best rates for flight, or hotels everywhere.
Tripwolf CEO:
The interest of that travellers guide network, is in the fact that worldwild travellers provide content, opinions, ideas and advices for other travellers, and so the website represents a huge platform, and generate traffic by its community.
Customers are also autors of content and informations, visitors give feed content to all the model, and so the platform is somehow auto managed, and auto developed.
The owner of the business doesn’t support costs from the traveller specialist like guides , because customers do that job for free.
The customers can get satisfaction from that platform, because they use to believe more and give trust on other customer advices, than on professional guides.
This is the added value for such a platform: a participative travel guide
It is a great opportunity for customers to belong to that community; because they can be assisted to prepare a travel, and they can meet other worldwild travellers.
The revenue sources come from :
- advertising: hotels, airline companies, tourism offices, travel insurances.. etc..
- Partnership: each partner has to pay regular fees to belong to partnership
That type of business model is now very commun and developed on Internet, because for the last years, customers become more and more webactive.
Different business models are combined regarding that website, all this being integrated in the overall strategy:
Advertising: banner ads for hotels, restaurants, or other tourism professionals. There is also a user registration part which can be usefull data collection for marketing campains for instance.
Community: from a social networking offerd by the concept.
Infomediary model: the traffic and informations generated by all the network, the registration of participants, can be used for marketing campains.
Example of 2 competitors:
http://www.travelwebdir.com
http://www.tripadvisor.com
This model is very interesting online, because of interactivity, quick and convenient answer; wich is offerd by Internet, so it would not be as well manageable offline.
Tripwolf with I phone application:
To me this model is sustainable, because, the more participants belong to community, the more it has a potential profitability, generated by traffic and attention consumers.
There should be different opportunities to sustain growth and development of this model:
Communication on the benefits fo customers looks important, to increase recognizion, reputation, and to increase traffic on the website. Partnerships can enable to catch customers’ attention: gifts, promotions and other commercial effects.
The more traffic you get, the more profitable is your potential.
Advertising can be developed as well and hold the growth.
Another way to develop such a concept could be in the future, the possibility to develop applications on Mobile phone like I phone, by which, the customer could be able to send all information, or picture, or movie; directly from his smart phone to the website. Informations would be transferred in real time. For the business, the concept could be developed by month subscription for instance.
