16
25 Comments

We're hibernating to survive

The last two weeks have seen our business disappear.

We operate in the travel and hospitality sector. Our website traffic is down by 70% and NEW subscriber revenue has gone to zero. Our revenue is vastly reduced. We're still managing to hold onto some renewal revenue.

The travel/hospitality sector is one of the worst hit sectors due to the current coronavirus pandemic. Our official message to all our members is NOT to travel but to practice cocooning - staying in your home.

We're not closing down, we're going into hibernation mode. Hibernation mode involves cutting all non essential expenditure and reducing overheads to the absolute minimum. We have some funds in the bank and we're hoping that these funds will see us through this crisis.

We're continuing to do the basics to keep things ticking over and hopefully to be in a better position when this pandemic ends.

We'll continue to:

  • Run and update our website.
  • Make technical Improvements to our website.
  • Edit and publish our weekly newsletter.
  • Support our users by email.
  • Write and publish content on our blog.
  • Update our Facebook group
  1. 3

    Best of luck! As long as you can stay afloat I am sure there will be a huge bounceback in demand over the autumn/winter period and coming year :)

    1. 1

      Thanks :) It will pass...

  2. 2

    Shay stay positive, business will be coming back especially in travel, once people realize they can't travel they will want to travel more. It's going to take the promise of a vaccine but it will come back. I was recently laid off after spending 8 years with a large OTA and know the business pretty well if you have any questions feel free to ping me.

    1. 1

      Thanks for the support 😉

  3. 2

    Best of luck Shay. Nice site & business. Do any of your hosts cater for families (i.e. with kids) as would love to take my family on one of these typw of projects.

    1. 2

      Thanks Rab. Sure, families welcome. A lot of our hosts cater for families, you can filter by search.

  4. 2

    Good luck! Hopefully you have resources to survive the crisis.

  5. 2

    Hopefully there'll be a spike in demand to make up for these difficult months when things return back to normal!

    1. 1

      Let's hope so :)

  6. 1

    good luck, although there might be some unique opportunities in today's world. if you can't leave your home but want to be in Paris bring some unique virtual experience.

    best of luck!

  7. 1

    We're in the same industry.
    To avoid churn, we have 2 months for free to our customers, otherwise they would have canceled.
    Things are going to get bad.
    I'm looking at other revenue streams at the moment since tourism will take a long time to get back on track

    1. 1

      Good idea, we're looking at other possible revenue streams too.

  8. 1

    Hi Shay, we're in a similar position in the transport sector. Revenue halted almost overnight so temporarily focusing on other income streams until this all passes. Stay healthy.

    1. 1

      Thanks, and stay well you too 😉

  9. 1

    I know the general advice is to focus, pick a niche and own it etc. For me I have a few diversified 'businesses' and in doing that I have found it helpful when there is a downturn in a particular market or geographic location. This particular 'hit' though is fairly serious. I would think about what you could take from what you have done and apply it to a different industry that might want it right now.

    1. 1

      I'm confident that this crisis will pass and using the time to improve our service 😉

  10. 1

    Okay question. I know I'm taking it a bit out of context. But

    Commit to one idea and see it through.

    Does this also apply if you don't have a single user after some time?

    1. 1

      It still applies along as you pivot and adapt to a new situation like we're experiencing now. We're looking at providing other online services to travellers at the moment.

      1. 2

        hmm. in my case I think I will have to change the idea completely. Not sure if I'm pivoting around anything.

  11. 1

    wow. that's some bad news. nice to see that you're doing the right thing and suggesting to stay home. cool. probably good in the long run.

    1. 1

      It affect everyone in the travel sector. However, it will pass :)

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