Smart Tourism Technology

In 2011, this guy created booking software for boat tours. In 2018, he sold it for $300 million. He kept all the money because he never raised a dollar. The story of an amazing software business you've never heard of 🧵 Meet FareHarbor. Booking software that 20,000 tourism operators run on. While other competitors raised $20-30 million rounds, they bootstrapped and doubled revenue every year. They took a clever approach. Let's dive in: Problem Brothers Lawrence and Zach Hester grew up in chilly Minnesota. When Lawrence visited Zach at school in Hawaii, he tried to reserve a surfboard and kayak online. He found there wasn't a simple way for these tourism businesses to accept online sales. So they built it. First Customers They sold the first customer without a product. Over 12 months, They got to 25 Hawaii-based clients including parasailing, snorkeling, and horseback-riding companies. They met with all prospects in person, even if it meant hopping on a plane. It worked. Pricing Innovation They realized tourism was transactional. These weren't repeat customers. Instead of charging for the software, they gave it away for free. They charged end-consumers a 6% transaction fee. FareHarbor made $100s to $1,000s per month from each operator. Done-For-You Instead of saying hey you need a website to these busy tourism operators. They would build a website and get it all set up to take orders for them. "In the early days, it was about building a business. It’s about having revenue. It’s not about playing startup.” Go-To-Market They hired young salespeople right out of college and paid them a tiny base salary but half the first-year bookings for the operators they signed. It was great money. One slept in a van and drove around Hawaii until he booked every single operator in the area. All Hands On Deck When a VC-backed competitor went under they swooped in. 90% of the team came to the office through the July 4 weekend. 20 air mattresses were brought in. But they needed more time. Take Advantage Other competitors tried to buy the failing company. They got turned down. Instead, FareHarbor offered $100k just to keep the lights on for 7 days. They agreed. In the end, FareHarbor snapped up 340 of Zerve's 549 clients and 90% of all its transaction volume. Outcome FareHarbor scaled to $50 million in revenue while doubling every year. They went on to sell to Booking. com for $300 million. Since the brothers never raised money, they got to keep almost all of it. Want to get more business breakdowns? Subscribe to my free newsletter below...

This weekend in Munich, I stopped in the hotel lobby and saw a classic stand filled with paper brochures. 🗞️ 😅 I was transported back 15 years to a time when every investor turned us down and most travel executives thought we were chasing the wrong dream. Back then, the “wisdom” was clear: hotels were the winning segment in online travel, apartments and rentals were the next big frontier, and tours & activities were nothing more than a low-value niche that was meant to stay offline. But history had other plans. Today, hotels have become commoditized, and experiences are emerging as the next great frontier in online travel. 🚀 How could the industry 'experts' get it so wrong? 1️⃣ Mobile changed everything. While everyone said mobile was the future in 2010, few realized it would completely reshape in-destination travel. Once roaming charges fell, flyers like these became relics within months. And GetYourGuide started to see incredible growth. 2️⃣ Our supply partners expanded the market All travel executives underestimated the creativity of the experience creators around the world. They had a fixed mindset on tours and activities being low-value products for mass tourism. When GetYourGuide gave the experience creators a global audience — where the true currency became star ratings and customer satisfaction instead of commission payments — the category expanded. Every day, we introduced new, exciting inventory that people had never considered using before GetYourGuide. 3️⃣ Social Media shaped a new generation of travelers Travel around 2010 was seen through the lens of high-intent conversions for commoditised inventory. Once Instagram and later TikTok launched, travelers' ambitions grew, and so did the demand for unforgettable experiences. This has been an incredible tailwind for our company that has lasted to the present day. It is also the perfect feedback loop with the new and exciting inventory that is being created. Today, we’re in the middle of the AI revolution. And I often ask myself: where might I hold a fixed mindset? How will the next decade of travel be reshaped? That brochure stand is a humbling reminder: even the most outstanding industry leaders can get it completely wrong.

I grew an email list from 0 to 500K subscribers in just 10 months for a weekly travel email series. Here’s exactly how we did it: First, nail your strategy. → Identify scalable acquisition channels (cold email, giveaways, social media). → Focus on creating top-notch content that people love. Second, here’s a list of do’s and don’ts based on our success: 1. COLD EMAIL: DON’T: Treat cold email like spam. DO: Use data to personalize at scale. We built a tool that searched Instagram for public data: - Hashtags (like #travel or #wanderlust). - Geotags (places they visited). - Followed accounts (@natgeo, etc.). This allowed us to write hyper-personalized emails with subject lines like: - “Your #hashtag photo” - “Came across your Instagram” Results: 45-50% open rates, 10-15% CTRs, and 200K subscribers from this channel alone. Pro Tip: Warm up your email servers before scaling. Platforms like Gmass + SendGrid worked wonders for us. 2. GIVEAWAYS: DON’T: Run generic giveaways that only attract freebie hunters. DO: Offer niche rewards your audience actually wants. We gave away free flights and hotel stays (funded by rewards miles) and incentivized sharing. Every referral earned bonus entries, creating a viral loop. Results: 5K-15K new subscribers per giveaway, with tools like Gleam and ViralLoops doing the heavy lifting. 3. SOCIAL MEDIA: DON’T: Spend months building social accounts from scratch. DO: Buy and rebrand existing accounts in your niche. We acquired travel-themed Instagram accounts with 700K followers for $10K, then grew the network to 2.2M followers. Here’s how we used them: - Drove traffic to our website, giveaways, and landing pages. - Automated email collection through DMs using tools like MassPlanner. - Created Facebook Groups (30K members), collecting emails via sign-up questions. 4. AMBASSADOR PROGRAM: DON’T: Waste money on influencers who don’t convert. DO: Partner with micro-influencers and reward them based on performance. We recruited 100s of travel influencers from our email data and incentivized them with swag and free travel. Results: Tens of thousands of new subscribers at a cost of just a few cents per email. --- To recap: 1. Personalize cold emails with data. 2. Use giveaways and social proof to fuel virality. 3. Build or buy niche audiences and grow from there. These strategies helped us scale fast. Your email list is one of the best assets you can build. Start experimenting and watch it grow.

How MakeMyTrip Quietly Built a $1B Travel Empire Through 11 Acquisitions Today, MakeMyTrip (MMT) controls 53.8% of India’s online travel market — from flights to hotels, buses, and B2B travel. MMT didn’t just grow. It built a dominant travel ecosystem by treating acquisitions as infrastructure. Since 2012, MMT has deployed over $300M across 10+ deals — not to chase vanity metrics, but to engineer category control. Here’s what that looked like: 1. ibibo Group (Goibibo + redBus): The Power Combo → Merged air, hotel, and bus into one travel super-platform → Hotels & Packages now drive $520.4M — 53% of revenue → redBus holds 75%+ share in online bus ticketing → Integration pains were real: $272M goodwill impairment → But no other player came close to replicating the scale 2. Corporate Travel: Quest2Travel + Happay → Built a high-margin B2B engine → Now serving 59,000+ SMEs and 450+ large corporates → Segment growing 30–40% YoY with rising contribution → Tighter integration of bookings + expense = reduced churn 3. Ground Transport: redBus + Savaari Car Rentals → Expanded from bus to intercity car rentals → Bus revenue jumped 28.8% YoY to $119.4M → Savaari unlocks an $8B+ offline market ripe for digitization → Together, they increase customer lifetime value 4. Quiet Wins: HolidayIQ, Simplotel, Bitla Software → Enhanced trust, conversions, and supplier efficiency → These backend plays widened margins without headlines 5. Fintech Layer: BookMyForex + TripMoney → Turned travel into a financial experience → Added prepaid cards, forex, and remittance as sticky revenue layers → Core to MMT’s travel-fintech super-app strategy The FY25 Scoreboard: → $978.3M revenue | $178.2M net profit → $9.8B gross bookings → 68M MAUs, 420M app downloads → Covers 3,250+ cities. Serves 30% of all domestic flyers. What’s Next? → CEO Rajesh Magow: “Next wave of growth = corporate, intercity, and homestays.” → Homestays in 1,250+ cities already live → Corporate travel unit poised to surpass mid-single digit share in coming quarters MMT didn’t just buy companies. It bought verticals, monetisation rails, and market dominance. It was the strategy #makemytrip #travel #startup

As someone who advises brands on how to design growth, I really like the thinking behind MakeMyTrip’s Travel ka Muhurat Sale. What stood out to me is how clearly the strategy shows through. Instead of a one-week flash sale that people forget about in two days, they have created a full month of reasons to keep coming back. Different destinations every week. Short, focused booking windows in the evenings when people are actually browsing. It turns travel planning into a series of nudges rather than one big push. There is also a clever cultural insight at play. Muhurat is about the right moment to start something important. Connecting that idea to travel makes it feel like a decision worth prioritizing, not a guilty pleasure. That shift in mindset is where real category growth happens. The financial mechanics are also smart. Co-funded bank discounts help them acquire customers efficiently. Distributed demand smooths operations and prevents frantic last-minute discounting. And with holidays around the corner, earlier bookings support better planning and cash flow for both the platform and its partners. It's a strong signal that this campaign isn’t just creative marketing, but a business growth lever that works. #TravelKaMuhuratSale #MakeMyTrip

👉 In the early 1990s, Deep had a stable career path. An MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, a solid job at ABN AMRO Bank, and later at GE Capital. 👉 Life was comfortable, but something inside him kept whispering: there’s more to build. 👉 His first big bet? Trying to bring AMF Bowling alleys to India. It was bold, but it flopped. The idea didn’t click with Indian customers back then. For many, that could have been the end of entrepreneurship. But for Deep, failure was just feedback. 👉 Then came the spark. In the late 1990s, travel booking was a nightmare—long queues, unreliable agents, hidden costs. 👉 Deep saw a problem millions were facing. And he asked himself a simple question: Can the internet make travel easy and transparent? 👉 In 2000, along with friends Keyur Joshi, Rajesh Magow, and Sachin Bhatia, Deep launched MakeMyTrip. 👉 With $2M funding from eVentures, they challenged traditional travel agents by offering something revolutionary—instant online booking, transparent pricing, and 24/7 support. 👉 But it wasn’t smooth sailing. The Indian market wasn’t ready. Broadband penetration was low, online payments were mistrusted, and adoption was slow. For the first few years, MakeMyTrip actually survived by serving the NRI market in the US booking tickets to India. 👉 By 2005, as internet usage grew in India, MakeMyTrip doubled down. They entered the domestic market with aggressive marketing, customer-first service, and trust-driven policies. 👉 Slowly but surely, Indians began to believe in booking flights and hotels online. 👉 The turning point? The low-cost airline boom in India. Suddenly, millions wanted quick, affordable travel solutions. MakeMyTrip was perfectly positioned. 👉 Fast forward to today—MakeMyTrip is valued at ₹23700, a pioneer that changed how Indians travel. From a failed bowling alley venture to building one of India’s biggest digital revolutions, Deep Kalra proved that: 👉 Failure isn’t the end—it’s a stepping stone. 👉 The best ideas come from solving real problems. 👉 Timing matters, but persistence matters more. ✈️ Next time you book a ticket in seconds, remember—it all started with one man’s vision to simplify travel. 👉

Super happy to have met Barry Smith and Gareth Williams, two of the co-founders of Skyscanner at the WiT (Web in Travel)! As someone in tech leadership, their journey underscores how far focused, technical talent can go, proving massive success isn't exclusive to people in the Silicon Valley ecosystem (they are from UK). Here are some striking takeaways from the session they shared on how three pure tech guys built a travel giant: 1. Tech Purity & Problem Solving First: The company was founded by three friends, all IT contractors, who started the business because they hated their jobs and commuted every day between East and West London together... The idea (Skyscanner was maybe the 50th or 60th of their brainstorming) came from one co-founder who needed flights and simply wrote code to index/scrape flight prices from airlines like Ryan Air, Buzz, and Go into a spreadsheet. Their initial perspective was not based on a business model, but on the premise that travelers needed access to full information. They were insanely product first focused. 2. The Bootstrapping approach: As three coders, they pitched "pretty badly" to early investors. But they successfully bootstrapped from 2002 to 2008 (thank you tech skills!), sharing income from their contracting work. They eventually got a $22 million secondary investment from Sequoia Capital in 2013, a monumental step for them. 3. Scalable Technical Innovation: They realized that innovation in customer acquisition and distribution is as important as product innovation if you don't want to end up spending all your revenue in Google ads... Two key step changes were approaching organic SEO early and building multi-language and multi-currency support into the product very early. They developed a system where they could add 2 or 3 localized languages every couple of weeks, allowing for efficient global growth, unlike competitors who might create a new codebase for every language. 4. Culture and Talent: Building the team in Edinburgh, Scotland, provided the benefit of loyalty, as people tended to join for the long term: they were a very attractive employer there, it may not have been the case in the Silicon Valley. They discovered that the top drivers for their engineers were: working on the toughest technical problems available, seeing their code go live and have top notch workstations / screens. A crucial lesson learned was to never drop the hiring bar, as trying to hire a 'B' and hoping they become an 'A' "worked out zero times in 5 years". This technical persistence, market innovation, and focus on talent led to Skyscanner's acquisition by Ctrip for $1.4 billion in 2017. Truly inspiring! #Tech #leadership #WiT #inspiring #fromGeektoStar #TheWayForeward

Veerle Witte has done something extraordinary in travel. She has built a successful B2C product. More than 100,000 people are journaling their travel experience - and they might just be doing that whilst travelling with you! In this episode Veerle shares her remarkable journey from National Geographic travel journalist to startup founder, how she built Travel Diaries with a microloan and a small development team, and why authentic travel stories are becoming even more valuable in the age of AI. But more than that, Veerle extends the invitation to tour operators to get access to their customer's real thoughts, written in long form both as the most persuasive marketing that could ever exist (this makes word-of-mouth both tangible and trackable) but also to unlock deep product insights and even get the heads up on where this customer might want to travel next. Travel companies have not really ever tapped into the "share" part of the digital journey - and now they can.

Delhi, 2008. Nishant and his brothers Rikant and Prashant started EaseMyTrip from a garage. They had no investors. No roadmap. Just a simple goal: save money on travel bookings for their father’s business. Within 3 months, disaster struck. They lost their initial investment. The company was on the brink of collapse. But Nishant wasn’t about to quit: They scrapped together resources from friends and family to keep the business alive. Then came the break they desperately needed: An airline noticed their frequent bookings and approached them to become an official travel partner. This gave them legitimacy and a foothold in the competitive travel industry. But their biggest challenge loomed ahead: Competitors like MakeMyTrip and Yatra had deep pockets, backed by millions in venture capital. Nishant? He refused to take external funding. Why? Because he believed in one principle: profit over scale. While others burned cash, EaseMyTrip stayed lean. Every decision was measured. Every expense scrutinized. And when the travel industry faced turbulent times, this frugality became their secret weapon. By 2011, Nishant had stabilized the company. But something was missing. A spark. A way to make EaseMyTrip stand out. That’s when Nishant turned to Bollywood. In 2014, he began producing movies, using them as branding vehicles for his company. The results? EaseMyTrip became a household name. But that wasn’t the most remarkable part: Unlike his competitors, Nishant expanded the company internationally—without ever raising funding. Singapore. Dubai. The UK. The Philippines. He achieved what seemed impossible in the capital-intensive travel industry. Then, in March 2021, Nishant led EaseMyTrip to another milestone: its IPO. The company went public, becoming India’s first online travel agency to list on the stock exchange without venture capital. The story should’ve ended there. But Nishant’s real legacy wasn’t just about building a profitable company. It was about how he stayed true to his roots: Even as EaseMyTrip grew, Nishant stayed grounded. He preached simplicity, treated his team like family, and embraced setbacks as learning opportunities. By the time he stepped down in 2025, EaseMyTrip was worth billions. Nishant sold a portion of his shares for personal reasons, but not before leaving behind a playbook for entrepreneurs: You don’t need funding. You need focus. You don’t need scale. You need strategy. And above all, you don’t need to compromise your values. Nishant Pitti’s journey isn’t just a business story. It’s a reminder that with grit and authenticity, you can achieve the impossible.

I recently had an incredible conversation with Matt Cooley on the Upside/Downside podcast about value creation at Discover Live, and I'm excited to share some of the key insights we discussed. The Big Picture: Only a small % of the world's population gets to enjoy international travel. At Discover Live, we're on a mission to democratize world exploration for the rest through live, interactive virtual tours with local expert guides. What I Learned Building This Business: (a) Technology is your enabler, not your differentiator - We actually started with VR but pivoted to Zoom when we realized we were spending more time troubleshooting goggles than delivering magical experiences. (b) Know your real competition - We're not competing with the traditional travel industry; we're competing with Netflix and Apple TV for people's leisure time. (c) Unit economics are deceptively complex - We're more like Disney than Airbnb, investing heavily in guide training and experience curation to create memories, not just facilitate transactions. The Results Speak: 98% customer satisfaction and an 88 NPS score by focusing on three core value drivers: accessibility, personalization, and human connection. One story that still gives me chills: During a Florence tour, we discovered a customer was virtually visiting the exact restaurant where she had her first kiss with her late husband 60 years earlier. Pure coincidence, but it reminded me we're not just in travel - we're creating connections that would otherwise be impossible. Whether it's a 4-generation family exploring Rome together or helping someone visit their ancestral homeland through our Ancestry partnership, we're proving that virtual experiences can expand travel rather than replace it. Listen to the full conversation where Matt and I dive deeper into the strategic challenges of scaling quality vs. quantity, the role of AI in personalization, and our vision for the future - https://lnkd.in/eqkVmcdq Thanks to Matt Cooley for the thoughtful questions and to everyone building businesses that make the world more accessible. #VirtualTravel #ValueCreation #Entrepreneurship #TravelTech #Accessibility