An adventure begins 🧗‍♂️

Hello fellow hackers! 👋

This is my first post and I couldn't be more excited to join this great community.

My background is in product management and design - I'm also a little bit of a code tinkerer too so I thought it was about time I put those skills to their best use and try and build something that can leave a big positive impact on the world...

It's time for me to begin my founder journey! 🥳 😬

I've worked for many years in the travel and tourism sector so I'm starting my journey there; currently working hard to talk to as many tourism operators as possible to validate some of my big assumptions and gather early traction.

One recurring theme is clear to me already, small businesses in this sector (think small motel owners, tour guides, surfing classes etc) are really being gouged from all angles when it comes to bookings and services.

The big bookings platforms (think Expedia, Booking com) have a tight grip and huge marketing budgets so getting your little tourism business exposure outside of these platforms is a struggle. Listing on there is a good way to get bookings but it also means competing for your own customers and a huge loss of potential revenue; especially with an average of 21% commission taken per single transaction!

In addition to this; they're constantly shelling out big bucks to sales sharks for digital marketing, website management, SEO, booking platforms, channel management and all kinds of ancillary services in order to try and boost direct bookings - usually with little impact and oversight.

It's early days of course, and I'm not planning to take on those huge multi-national booking platforms (at least not for a long, long time) but I see a great opportunity to support the passionate people in this sector and can't wait to share more with you soon about my solution and journey! 🚀

🙏 Thanks for reading, if you're keen to learn more I can be found on Twitter and of course feel free to message me here too!

Let's do this!