With an estimated $89 billion dollar market size, tours and activities are definitely some of the most underestimated genres that are not yet entirely tackled by entrepreneurs. Isango, one of Europe’s leading tour operating networks, raised $8 million in its early days and now reportedly employs around 70 people in their offices.
Tour operators are much like local businesses. They tend to neglect the internet and its power for driving new customers and generating revenue out of it. They are also vastly spread around the globe, mostly in rural areas, living off from travel agents selling their tours or tourists stopping by by chance.
Tourradar, an Australian/Austrian Startup, tries to unify these tour operators and offer a customizable affiliate solution for travel properties – be it publishers or flight search engines. Travis Pittman, Tourradar’s CEO, told me that over the last few weeks and months since their launch they’ve managed to obtain access to more than 600 tour operators around the world. Also publishers, like tripwolf, have already integrated their iFrame solution and are now offering tours to their customers. It’s a tripple win for both the tour operators, the publishers and obviously for tourradar themselves.
Contrary to Isango and others, that are targeting travellers when they are already at the places of where the tour happens, tourradars aims more to become a hub for those tours and picking up travellers in the process of in-advance travelling. Thus they are also planning to offer a pay-per-month solution for travel agents, that enables them to filter and pick tours for their clients more efficiently.
The company is currently self-funded and although generating revenues via its CPC model, it is looking for funding to expand their service and drive sales to local tour providers.