Webinar Replay: Demo Day Friday with SpareFare, Eightydays and Daytrip

Here’s the replay and Q&A from our first Demo Day Friday webinar on Travel Massive LIVE where we talk with 3 startups to learn more about their business models and challenges.

In this LIVE webinar, we heard from Hanna Zhyhar from Eightydays.me, Galena Stavreva from SpareFare.net, and Jan Martínek from Daytrip.

Catch the webinar recording and check out our Q&A section below:

Here’s a summary of the startup pitches and the Q&A session —

Eightydays.me – An all-in-one multi-destination trip planner

Hanna Zhyhar is the co-founder of Eightydays.me – a trip planner which combines flights, trains and ferries to create multi-destination European trip in five seconds. Hanna is a member of Travel Massive San Francisco, Moscow and Silicon Valley.

Why did you create Eightydays.me?

Half a billion travelers from outside of Europe (USA, Asia, Australia) combine more than three destinations during one European trip. That creates a huge amount of challenges:

• Where to go?
• Calculate the total cost
• Find and choose carriers
• Mistakes while booking tickets on different websites
• Mistakes while booking baggage that suits all the flights in one trip
• Flight cancelations
• Mistakes with time zones
• Mistakes with choosing inconvenient and far located airports
• Incorrect time planning
• Non-personalized support from carriers

That’s why we created a tool for these travelers, to make it easy to visit more than three destinations during one trip in Europe.

How does it work?

You specify your starting city, travel dates, and must-visit cities. In a few seconds, the platform will give you the first option for your trip. You can adjust your travel itinerary directly on the map with a large number of tools for customizations. You can choose carriers from the suggested list. After that, with one click you can book your whole trip. Travelers will not be redirected to external websites.

Eightydays.me has made more than 450 bookings from 45 nationalities, lists 250 European cities, 270 airports, 180 railway stations and 25 ferry terminals.

How are you changing the industry?

• Book a multi-destination trip in 5 seconds
• We are the only ones in the world who combines flights, trains, and ferries in one trip
• People can book up to 25 cities in one trip
• Direct flights and direct trains only
• No early morning / late night flights or faraway airports
• 24/7 online support before and during the trip

Current business challenges:

• Building trust and credibility
• Adding hotels to our platform
• Packaging tours – transportation, accommodation and activities
• Geography – expanding beyond Europe
• Partnerships with businesses and governments

Here are some of the questions from the audience —

Q: Do you integrate with any ride share services like Uber?

We are thinking about it but not yet. We’re looking for partners.

Q: How will you get more traction (visitors) in today’s competitive travel landscape?

It’s a real challenge for us. Paid advertisement is not our main channel to attract visitors. We have a lot of articles in major travel media targeted to our main markets – USA, Asia and Australia. We use Facebook groups to answer questions about multi-city trips, where to go, and share other travel tips. We use Quora and other similar sources. We also work with a huge list of influencers – we provide trips for them and they create blog posts on their channels. This is one of our major sources for clients.

Q: Is your platform on meta-search model?

It is an OTA (online travel agency) model – people can search and book all tickets at once.

Q: Will you be able to include carbon offset costs to show which is the best city to go to / through?

This is an important issue for us and we are and will work on this in the future.

Q: Where do you source your content?

We use aggregators like Skyscanner, but we also have direct partnerships with airlines and train companies.

Check out more about EightyDays at www.eightydays.me.

SpareFare.net – A marketplace for non-refundable but transferable bookings

Galena Stavreva is the CEO of SpareFare.net – an online platform connecting people who have bought flights, holiday packages or hotel rooms but can no longer use them, with people seeking discounted travel options. Galena is a member of Travel Massive London.

Why did you create SpareFare.net?

Have you ever had to cancel your holidays because something happened? It happened to me quite a lot of times. And a lot of the reservations are non-refundable, so if you can’t go, you can’t get your money back and you’re kind of stuck. Luckily, a lot of the non-refundable reservations are actually transferable. So you can change the name of the person who is traveling and you can sell your own reservation to someone else.

How does it work?

It works for flights, packaged holidays and hotel reservations. SpareFare.net is a marketplace – we connect the sellers and buyers and we make sure their exchanges are secure. The buyers on the platform recover some of the money that they’ve spent on their holidays. They’re probably not going to recover everything but even if you get half of your money back that’s still so much better than losing everything.

For the buyers – all of the flights and hotels are sold at a price which is cheaper than the current prices of airlines and hotels, so the bargain is awesome. We only pay the seller after the buyer checks in to the hotel or flight to make sure there’s no travel fraud.

Over 60 airlines allow name changes. You can see the full list on our platform. They are mainly European low-cost airlines. Hotels and travel agents also allow name changes. Actually, travel agents in Europe are obliged by law to allow name changes to their reservations.

How are you changing the travel industry?

• We are creating a new type of shared economy in travel
• We are on a mission to make traveling cheaper and easier for everyone
• We fill a massive gap in the tourism industry

We’ve been working on SpareFare for over three years and have been helped hundreds of travelers recover some money from their reservations, or get a discounted flight, package or hotel booking. If SpareFare didn’t exist, that wouldn’t be possible. So I truly believe that we are helping travelers in a very tangible way.

Our current business challenges: 

• People don’t know they can use us, both sellers and buyers – we have to educate our market and is slowing us down a lot
• We are looking for partners – people who sell and buy travels (hotels or travel agents)

Here are some of the questions from the audience —

Q: Are you planning to cooperate with the airlines actively?

Yes, we would very much like to. However, we are still too small for airlines to pay attention to us which is why we started partnering with hotels and travel agents first. But we want to partner with all sorts of travel providers. We’re very welcome to see how we can make it work. Right now, we are not actively working on airline partnerships yet.

Q: Are you using travel bloggers to get the word out there?

Yes, we have a very exciting affiliate program which is going to roll out soon so we’re going to look for partnerships with bloggers and influencers in that field. If you want to get on board or learn more, get in touch with me and as soon as I have more details, I’ll send them over. If there are any travel bloggers listening, just drop me a line and we’ll be in touch.

Q: Do we have to pay any extra charge to airlines for name changes?

Yes, airlines always charge fees for name changes and if you’re wondering how much they are, they vary by airlines. They are between 25 to 150 GBP. You can check all fees and rules on sparefare.net/airlines.  

When you use SpareFare you will be notified of any additional fees. This is why airlines allow name changes – they make a little bit of extra revenue. Hotels don’t charge for name changes.

Check out SpareFare at www.sparefare.net.

Daytrip – Turning transportation into an experience

Jan Martínek is part of Daytrip – a door-to-door service with English-speaking drivers that offers a curated selection sightseeing stops on the way. Jan is chapter leader for Travel Massive Prague. 

Why was Daytrip created?

Nowadays, everything in travel is about the experiences. From our point of view, that’s true, except for the transportation itself. Experience companies like Airbnb, Klook, Eatwith, GetYourGuide get huge investments to develop this niche. Clearly there is a pattern.

But usually, the transportation itself is not the fun part of your trip, it’s more like something you get through. It’s what happens between the good times. Transportation is often boring, unpleasant, rigid and formal. So we thought what if we make transportation an experience too. That’s how Daytrip was created.

How does it work?

Daytrip offers intercity trips – we take you from one city to another. You have an English-speaking private driver who can tell you everything about the location you’re going to. It’s not like a tour guide, but more like a local friend. The best part is that when you are booking your trip, you can see what places you can visit on the way.

Let’s say you’re going from Prague to Berlin, you can choose to visit some of the recommended places with your driver. This turns your transportation into a road trip.

The booking is flexible – you can book, change, or cancel anytime. It’s comfortable – clean and spacious private cars and door-to-door service. You decide when and where to be picked up and dropped off.

Here are some of the questions from the audience —

Q: How do you deal with the impact of your service versus sustainable transport / travel costs?

Regarding sustainability, in terms of carbon emissions we try our best to use only new cars with new emission quality standards.

When it comes to sustainability in terms of over tourism, we are helping because one of the impacts of Daytrip is that people go to some parts of the country to find hidden gems they didn’t know were there. For example, if you visit the Czech Republic, most people go to famous cities like Prague or Cesky Krumlov. This might be because they don’t know how to get around or they don’t know where to look. So we offer less popular places to visit, moving people away from the most crowded cities.

Q: How do you ensure travelers’ safety on Daytrip?

We have over 2000 drivers globally – even though it’s a big number we hire each of them personally. We meet with them, we test their driving, how they behave, what kind of people they are. Safety is very important for us, which is why we take time to meet the drivers individually.

Q: How do you maintain the control over your service?

Our drivers are independent contractors. Whenever we hire drivers, we make sure they speak English, behave well, know the locations, have a car that’s in a great condition, not too old. We also have quite a strict feedback system. If something is wrong, we investigate the problem. Basically, if a driver keeps getting bad reviews, we stop working with them.

Q: Who is Daytrip’s target audience?

It differs from region to region. In Europe, it’s usually people from the US or Australia. Our clients are people who are going to Europe for a longer time, they want some sort of comfort, they don’t know how to get around. So this is a simple solution for them, they go from city to city or country to country with ease. 

To see how Daytrip works, go to www.mydaytrip.com.

— Thank you Hanna, Galena and Jan for sharing your expertise! Thanks to everyone who joined this webinar.

👉 Want to pitch your startup? Apply for our next Demo Day Friday live webinars. 

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