INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The tours and experiences market is projected to be worth $183 billion this year, and today a startup that has made inroads into the space
announcing 33 million Canadian dollars (US$25 million) in funding, from a single investor, Tritium Partners, money that it plans to use to
hire more talent, build out its proprietary booking, payment and review publishing technology and expand its business development team.This
is the first outside funding for the Vancouver, Canada -based startup, which for the past 10 years has bootstrapped its business, building
it up to 1.45 million customers and some US$45 million in revenues
Vayable, an experiences startup incubated in Y Combinator, quietly shut down in December.The company today says it has some 4,130
professional guides and 30,000 different tours discoverable on its platform, ranging from small group tours to private excursions
selected, the company tells me; and also, that it has focused on people who you might not typically associate with touristic outings,
In addition to growth capital, we value the strategic advice offered by both the Tritium team and its network of experienced marketplace
the startup control the full experience
Part of its hand-picking of guides includes running background checks on them, and it also handles payments and any customer support
This seems to have a positive impact on both sides of its marketplace, both by getting repeat business from travelers but also positive
ToursByLocals earns a 20% commission on all tours booked.What will be interesting is to see whether, in a bid for more scale, ToursByLocals
expands the third-party aspect of its business
That could include feeding its own product into aggregation platforms like Booking.com or Airbnb, which are keen to expand their revenues
per user with extras like tours and experiences, on top of airline and other transportation sales, accommodation bookings and other travel
services they may already offer.Or it could mean bringing in more third-party content to its own platform, for example larger tours or other
travel-related products and services
split the cost of a four-person day tour when they each step ashore during a cruise.
