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Travello is a social network for travellers used in over 180 countries. Below is our recent interview with Ryan Hanly, CEO and Co-Founder at Travello:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to Travello?
A: We’re the easiest way to connect with new travellers in a new destination. Our feed had over 1.8million events last month and it’s all user generated travel content. So our users are also using Travello to show off their adventures!
But we’ve also developed a suite of Travel Technology that allows travel companies to connect with their customer in-destination. We house this under our BlueTee brand.
Q: What’s the best thing about Travello that people might not know about?
A: It’s free and we’re used in over 180 countries! So you can pretty much travel anywhere in the world, open Travello and find a like-minded traveller right beside you that you didn’t know about! We make meeting new people in new destinations really, really easy.
Q: You have recently raised $5M, could you tell us more about your recent funding round?
A: The round is really going to be used to pour fuel on the fire. We’re already growing quickly, but we really want to be the largest and most trusted community of travellers on the planet. And this will allow us to do that.
We also want to strengthen and extend our partnership network. we’re actively seeking new travel companies to partner with. We can give them customer touchpoints that we’re previously unattainable and that’s a game-changer for the travel industry.
So our technology is all well and truly past the MVP stage, this is all about growth!
Q: What’s the core of your brand BlueTee?
A: It’s a suite of platform technology that allows travel companies to connect with their customers in-destination, and it requires NO technical integration – which is one of our big USPs. Travel companies lose touch with their customers after the ‘point-of-sale’ and are simply unable to connect with them in any meaningful way. We provide them with those touchpoints through our self-serve geo-fence, segmentation and push notification platform. To my knowledge, we’re the only company in the world that can give travel businesses access to this technology with no technical integration on their behalf. It’s turn-key. So this is really changing the way brands are marketing to their customers. Finally they can send the right message, to the right travellers, in the right place at exactly the right time.
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Q: How do you see the future of Travello?
A: We have a huge product roadmap, but we really want to facilitate a seamless travel experience for our users. Travel, in general, is really behind when it comes to technology so we have an opportunity to execute some really exciting plans.
This includes tapping into a range of AI and machine learning technologies to provide really curated and personalised recommendations. We call it ‘the market of one’. If we know what you like and where you are, we can serve you that curated information as you arrive – saving you hours of research.
We want to provide unique travel content, specific for each traveller, that can’t be found anywhere else. So if you are a 24-year-old French Female Traveller, interested in x, y, z arriving in London, we can tell you the best experiences, things to do and things to see that others, just like you, have experienced and recommended.
The internet is a great place to find recommendations, but the space is really broken. Judging a tourism product or experience based on an aggregation of 10+ years of recommendations from people who are nothing like you makes no sense. There is no relevance there. Travellers want to know what people who are like them recommend, from last week! We can do that and it’s one of the key things that we’ll be working on over this next phase.