The Our.Guide startup dealing with innovative projects in the e-tourism
segment intends to become a global company and is developing sales on new
foreign markets. Eventually, the company wants its Our.Guide
application to be used as a standard at hotels’ websites worldwide.
The strategy regarding Our.Guide’s expansion on foreign markets involves full utilisation of resellers which – in the case of this service – include above all companies providing hotel website development and maintenance services. At present, the company is conducting the first implementations with such entities as, for example www.tambourine.com and www.worldhotels.com. In the area of hotel marketing, each of them provides services to over 300 facilities, which provides a very large potential customer base. What is more, any IT or marketing company providing services to hotels may propose the solution offered by Our.Guide. The startup’s objective is having its Our.Guide widget used as a standard at hotels’ websites worldwide. So far, the company has completed implementations at facilities located in the USA, Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and, obviously, in Poland. The company’s CEO is very optimistic about the development prospects for its products and believes that a strategy based on building a global entity is the right direction.
“During the first year of selling the Our.Guide service, we focused on our domestic market in order to improve the solution and receive feedback from hoteliers. Nowadays, Polish hoteliers and Polish hotels represent a world class standard and their awareness in the area of building a benefit package for their guests does not differ from that of European or American hoteliers. A natural direction for developing sales of the service is introduction onto new markets, beginning from the markets of developed European countries and followed by the enormous market of the USA. The global booking.com service focuses today over 800,000 hospitality facilities worldwide and this is the size of our sales market for the Our.Guide service.” – comments Lucas Sobański, Our.Guide's CEO.
Our.Guide is also developing its segment of B2C products, i.e. guides for tourists interested in a personalised guide with a full database of attractions and events nearby their destination. The company is seeing high interest in such products among local authorities and intends to intensify cooperation with them. This proves that hotels need not be the only recipients of the guides offered. What is more, local authorities may use those products to strengthen business relations among local companies. To diversify the revenue sources, Our.Guide has also launched sales of advertising products within its guides. Local businesses, including first for all restaurants and tourist attractions, have thus gained the possibility to deliver their offer directly to hotel guests in real time.
“Development of the world’s best technology of personalised tourist guides is only the beginning, as finding the sales market for the software is what matters. We started selling the solution on the hotel market, but at the same time we are trying to get other companies from the tourism industry, such as tour operators, transport companies or booking websites interested in it, too. During the summer holiday period, the company conducted pilot projects with such companies as Neckermann Poland and Travelist, collecting very interesting market data which will soon be published in industry media. Another project is the www.cityinspire.com website whose aim is to allow other tourists in Poland buy a personalised guide for their trip for as little as PLN 9. Annually, 21 million Poles go on holiday, with 14 million travelling within Poland. All of them are our potential customers, which creates a market worth PLN 150 million for the company.” – concludes L. Sobański.
City Inspire SA, owner of Our.Guide, is preparing to carry out a crowdfunding campaign on the Beesfund platform and is planning to enter the NewConnect market. Funds obtained from Beesfund will be allocated to supporting further development of the services and products offered as well as intensification of foreign expansion. At present, the company is focusing on development of its flagship products – Our.Guide system and CityInspire.com tourist guides. Our.Guide is a very popular application offered in the SaaS model – widget addressed to hotels which provides their guests with a tourist guide covering the nearest surroundings.
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