Kirill Mysyagin, Excursiopedia.com: Robots will not become good guides

The founder of the service for searching for excursions and guides is about how the Tours & Activities market works, how to compete with electronic guides and will Google Glass be able to win a tourist market

Photo: Justun lloys / Reuters

As part of a joint project with the Runetology program, Slon publishes an interview with representatives of the Russian Internet business-entrepreneurs, experts, creators of startups, top managers of companies and heads of industry organizations.

This time, Kirill Mysyagin, the founder of the service for searching for excursions and guides Excursiopedia.com, talks about how the Tours & Activities market arranges how to compete with electronic guides and whether Google Glass can win a tourist market

You can listen to the full version of the interview without abbreviations on the website of the Runetology program.

About headquarters in Germany

From the point of view of opening small businesses and small revolutions, which is more important for startup, Germany is one of the best countries in Europe. There is state support for startups, tax benefits that can save on tax taxes, including, and at the same time, there are very low costs for accounting, accounting issues, and so on.

About competitors

On the one hand, we can be compared with systems like Booking.com, that is, with very mature systems working in related tourist markets. Regarding Booking.com or Airbnb, we have a small number of sentences. There, the number of proposals is calculated by hundreds of thousands. If we talk about our direct competitors, then we are in a very good position. If we talk about individual tourism systems and social reservation sites of excursions, outdoor educational holidays, then we now have the largest base of proposals.
If we talk about the whole market, we are in second place after Getyourguide, but they are more engaged in group offers from large companies, so we are not direct competitors with them. Nevertheless, by the end of the year, we want to overtake them by the number of proposals. I think the question is in the maturity of the market. If we are talking about hotels, airplanes, car rental, then any company can come to the market tomorrow, connect to well -known systems and immediately offer hundreds of thousands of hotels around the world. In our market, to such systems as Excursiopedia, Getyourguide, Viator, there were no global distribution systems, there were no databases of proposals.

On the potential of the Tours & Activities market

Initially, services related to residence and movement, that is, aircraft, hotels, rental of cars and so on, developed. Right now, when these needs are very well satisfied, companies operating in the Tours & Activities market began to appear actively. If we talk about the demand for this service, then when we started, there was not even any market research. Even on a global scale, no one examined this topic. We proceeded from our developments, our research. The experience of personal tourism helped here, the experience of managing an international tourism agency also helped. Almost 90 percent of our acquaintances, to whom we helped with advice, 90 percent of our customers who came to the travel agency turned to the same question. We offered them a plane and a hotel, booked, people understood how they would get there, but they did not understand what they could do there, how to spend time effectively.
In addition to our own experience, which indicates the demand for the service, there is a study that came out at the beginning of last year. It shows that the Tours & Activities tourist market is more than 90 billion dollars a year. The market really exists, it is huge, specific, it differs from hotels and aircraft. For the most part, he is now offline. This is good in terms of investment time in this market. If we talk about tourism in general, then more than 40% of the reservations in tourism are made through online platforms. In our market, online booking is less than 20%. Of these 20%, the lion's share is on the sites of the suppliers themselves, the guides themselves. Of course, this is not like booking air tickets through the Aeroflot website. Rather, it is a contact form with a phone, an email address. This does not solve the client’s problem in terms of payment, guarantees, quality assessment.

About the example of Airbnb

Airbnb started three years earlier than us. Based on the dynamics of Airbnb, our dynamics and market volumes, this is quite possible. Based on this logic, we built a company development strategy. In the first one and a half years, we were engaged in the base of suppliers, the base of proposals. It is pointless to call buyers if the shelves are empty. The client will come, look, be upset, leave and tell everyone how bad it is. Therefore, first of all, we went to suppliers. We suggested that they post proposals with us. Of course, suppliers who do not receive orders for a long time are upset, but they understand that this is Marketplace, and we cannot guarantee orders for all our suppliers.

About geographical development

Initially, we tried to cover with a minimum set of offers more and more well-known tourist places, after which we began to concentrate our activity on the study of individual cities, including Munich, Paris, Prague, Barcelona, ​​New York, London and so on. In these cities, we began to attract customers and make sales, which began to attract new suppliers in these cities. In other cities, suppliers were still registered, they themselves posted information. Now we have more than 1,200 cities in 135 countries in the database. Honestly, when a new city appears, I do not even know where it is.

About the sales model

We allow you to make this personal contact, and any client in our system can personally contact the supplier, discuss certain parts, and agree on an individual sentence. In the same way, the supplier can ask his clients interested in his questions. In this regard, according to the sales model, we are more like Airbnb than Booking.com. From the point of view of explosive growth, there is a problem of secondary need, but we are sure that we can offer certain tools that will increase the viral effect of our product. We expect that tourists around the world are more focused on the contents of their journey than to solve a headache, how to fly and how to get. These are already clear and well -known issues, and the question will be how very interesting to spend your time, since time is one of the main non -renewable resources. This topic bothers tourists more and more. We give a good answer to this question.

About the capabilities of the service

We have many proposals that are not quite related to excursions, but related to events. For example, fishing, a balloon flight, a trip to the Ferrari, a campaign in Moulin Rouge, dinner at the Eiffel Tower restaurant and so on. These proposals are absolutely competitive from the point of view of any tourist. If a tourist wants to see the city economically quite economically, then he can book the Hop On - Hop OFF bus. These are red buses that travel to almost all major cities in the world. A ticket costs from 15 euros. If a person wants to get a more interesting individual service, then he can book an excursion from a private guide. There are nuances too. Our system allows you to compare prices and choose the particular guide and that tour that correspond to both the wallet and the price ratio - quality. Someone is interested in a VIP tour for the whole day worth 500 euros, someone can book a tour for 80 euros for 2-3 hours. At the same time, we allow you to compare the prices of different guides, which is very difficult to make without us, and choose the most effective offer. If people travel with friends or family, booking an individual tour is cheaper and more effective than booking a group tour. For example, a bus tour from Munich to Neuschwanstein - a well -known castle of Bavaria - costs about 50 euros per person. If you go a family of four, then it will be 200 euros, which corresponds to the initial cost of an individual excursion. At the same time, an individual tour is an order of magnitude more comfortable, more effective and more interesting.

About competition with mobile guides and Google Glass

We have an advantage against a potential competitor that we offer not only guides, but also entertainment. Whatever services appear, they still need to be booked and ordered. Suppose to go to the show in the "Moulin Rouge" or visit Disneyland. Whatever information services appear, all the same, you need to buy a ticket somehow, somewhere to order it and somehow get there. We will solve this problem. With information services, we are happy to cooperate and provide them with additional monetization.

As for guides, I am sure that this service will not go anywhere. There are more and more tourists. Whatever additional information services are created, nothing will replace human communication. The effectiveness of human communication is an order of magnitude greater. I myself traveled a lot, including using the services of guides, guides and various information services. Of course, you can’t compare the situation when you read the book, and then try to remember what and where it is, what kind of building it is, when it was built and so on, with the services of the guide.

Even having a smartphone with applications, audio guides, guides built on the basis of GPS, you spend a lot of time not to enjoy views and travel, but on the perception of information. When you travel with a private guide, you get all this information in the background. You enjoy the sights and walks, while in an intelligible form you get a description of everything you see. In addition, you get a lot of purely human and practical information, that is, you will find out how people live. A professional guide, as a rule, looks good at the client, selects information and submit information precisely in the form in which it will be interesting to receive it to the client. Of course, electronic means of help are unlikely to reach such a level of customization in the next 5-10 years.