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Europe, Regions, Travel Startups, Travel Tech

Startup Alley Spotlight: What’s next for SpareFare?

We kick off our London Startup Alley interview series with Galena Stavreva, the CEO of SpareFare.

In this interview, we asked Galena (a member of Travel Massive London) about market trends, her tips for other founders and the company’s plans for the future.

👓 Learn about SpareFare in our first interview with them.

As a new and upcoming travel startup, what keeps you going forward?

We know that the service we provide is very much needed in the market. Every third time I speak with someone about what we do, they tell me “I wish I knew about you sooner, you would’ve saved me so much money.” Millions of people lose money on their unused travel bookings every year because they are not aware of any safe and hassle-free ways to resell their reservations.

What should travel startups know before they launch?

It is better if you do not know everything from the beginning! I was blissfully unaware of the many hurdles I needed to go through to grow SpareFare when I started, and that gave me the confidence to start in the first place.

Running a startup is hard, but it is better if you do not know how hard exactly, before you are too deep in the mud to pull out!

You can deal with things as and when they come up and you do not have to have everything figured out at the beginning.

Otherwise, you might not start at all.

What are the trends in the travel industry that will affect you the most?

The exponential growth of online marketplaces over the past few years has been no short of an unpredicted phenomenon.

The growth of the marketplace economy led by sharing economy companies is set to double between 2017 and 2022, growing from $19 billion to $40 billion.

Beyond well-known e-commerce marketplace brands like eBay, Amazon, Airbnb, Uber or Grubhub, marketplace models are disrupting just about every traditional industry. The travel industry is no exception.  I am hoping that we can start a new trend in the travel industry – a peer-to-peer marketplace for travel reservations.

How is a secondary travel marketplace different from listing your reservation on Ebay, for example?

It’s very different! SpareFare offers fraud protection to both buyers and sellers and dramatically reduces the risk of transferring flights, hotel rooms and holidays to strangers by acting as an intermediary.

Sellers are protected because they do not change the name on the reservations and pay the name change fees before SpareFare have received the money from the buyer. That way, sellers will never be left out of pocket due to buyers changing their mind at the last moment. Buyers are protected too, because SpareFare holds the money until the date of the flight, or the check-in date of the hotel. This prevents sellers from reselling the same ticket multiple times.

This is very different from selling or buying travel reservations on Ebay, where there is a significant trust issue between buyers and sellers. Travel reservations are expensive, and if something goes wrong, travelers will suffer significant loses.

Something else that we do, is verify all offers when they are listed on the site. This way, if someone is trying to sell a flight with an airline which does not allow name changes, they are not able to. This assures buyers that all listings on the site are transferable and can be purchased.

What’s next for SpareFare?

We want to create a new type of shared economy in travel.

In 10 years, we want everyone to be aware that they can resell their travel reservations to other people

We also want SpareFare to be the go-to site for everyone looking for a cheap holiday, flight or a hotel room.

That way, we want to enable millions of people every year to travel cheaply and see more of our amazing world. We want to help everyone who is not able to travel to recoup at least some of the money they spent on their holidays, making travel more affordable for everyone.

Thanks, Galena, for the inspiring interview!


Follow Galena and SpareFare on Travel Massive to connect with them and learn more.


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