Vidados Links Travellers With Local Hosts

Hannah Kacary is the marketing manager of Vidados and helps travellers link up with local hosts around the world to create memorable and unique holiday experiences.

You could be photographing bears during the salmon run in Alaska, surfing on the world’s coolest beaches, getting all zen on a yoga trip, speaking Spanish in Ecuador or learning to cook with professional chefs. Vidados avoids your traditional bus tours and hotels and helps create a unique and local experience.

So, we asked London’s Travel Massive member Hannah exactly how they built their platform up and where the success of the business lays.

Who is your start up for?

We specialise in activities from yoga to cycling, fitness to cooking, photography to languages and the more bizarre such as cheese-making, wood carving and more!

The majority of our guests are solo travellers and vary massively in age, although they’re predominantly what we like to call pre-baby and post-baby. 20-30s somethings who haven’t had children yet, and 50+ year olds whose children have moved out and now it’s their time to have fun again!

What inspired you to create this startup?

It was on a beach in Tarifa, when our founder and CEO Vanessa tried (and partially succeeded) to kitesurf, that the reason to travel became clear. As Vanessa shared a victorious dinner with her instructors and kitesurfing friends, she realised that this is what travel is all about: it’s about being a world away from the 9-5, connecting with new people, the culture and environment in a unique and memorable way.

Out of this Vidados was born.

Vanessa already had 25 years in the travel industry and had previously set up Vidados’ sister site, GoLearnTo, 8 years previously so she had the experience and knowledge to know that Vidados was what the travel industry was missing.

shutterstock_72007534

How did you build your startup?

Vanessa joined forces with the lead developer of ASOS Marketplace to combine her product knowledge with leading technology. Together they’ve successfully created a platform where guests can connect with local hosts, be part of their journey and create extraordinary travel stories.

How is your startup changing the travel scene today?

While there are plenty of day-experience tour operators on the market, very few of them offer the chance to stay with a host, in their family home whilst benefitting from their local knowledge and expertise in their offered activity. We’re not just accommodation and we’re not just activities: we’ve combined the two to give you a complete package.

shutterstock_108839882

How did you get your startup off the ground and gaining traction?

We benefitted from having a successful sister site in GoLearnTo. Customers were already beginning to look for more choice and availability than GoLearnTo could provide and that’s where Vidados steps in with more activities, more locations around the world and even more fun!

How is your startup changing the future of the industry or helping to make travel better?

By only working with small, local and independent hosts we help boost local economies. Many of our hosts will recommend you try out their favourite restaurants and bars so you’ll not only be eating delicious food (for less than you would at tourist traps) but you’ll also be helping small businesses grow.

shutterstock_218011735

Travel Start-Up is a monthly series that profiles unique online travel start-ups in the Travel Massive community around the world. Connect with Hannah and Vidados on Travel Massive, Facebook and Twitter.