LockTrip Community Update — September 2022
Dear Community!
Today we want to update you about the latest developments regarding the LockTrip project and what we have been working on.
Integration of 2 New Suppliers Completed
Last month we have completed the integration of two new suppliers into the marketplace, and made several releases for post-deployment polishing.
As a result, we now have more than 20 suppliers integrated — comprised of the most relevant and highest quality players available in the industry. It was a long and difficult path that led us from the very first integration to where we are now.
We are very thankful to everyone who supported us throughout this exciting journey and want to express our special gratitute to our developers, who tirelessly worked day and night to make it a reality.
Upgrade to a new Technology
Our team has completed most of the QA work on the new front-end version of the marketplace, which is built on a completely new technology that will make it not only faster and more reliable, but at the same time easier to push new upgrades to.
The general look and feel of the marketplace will remain the same. But the quality and performance will be notably enhanced. From a technology perspective, this will be one of the biggest deployments we have ever made — and it is scheduled to go live before the end of this month!
With the official announcement, we will share more detailed data on the speed improvements made. Stay tuned!
Exploring Additional OTA Integrations
Webjet shared with us that due to the fast recovery of the travel market and the difficulties in scaling back operations at the same speed, the integration of LockTrip’s B2B product into the Webjet OTAs will be paused.
While this news was unexpected and comes as a speed bump to our initial B2B roadmap, we do understand and support the rationale behind the measure.
From our perspective, the Webjet OTAs are an important asset to our B2B product. This is why it is in our interest to ensure that their customers have the best experience.
Forcing a deadline during intensive operational scaling can compromise this and harm the future prospects of the program. Even more so as the integration is a massive technical task with a significant impact on the user experience and interface. It will require a focused effort and attention from both sides, especially in the few months before and after the integration.
We want to emphasize that our overall plans haven’t changed and that the progress we have made so far will be preserved. The value gained from the synergies and know-how during the collaboration over the past 1.5 years has been incredible and the B2B product itself is practically complete.
While recently joined members may only be aware of the Webjet component of our B2B plans, the actual scope and potential of this product is much broader.
The horizontal expansion into multiple OTAs has been an important element of the LockTrip project since its inception back in 2017, and was outlined as a key target in our first-ever whitepaper.
As elaborated above, work on the B2B product is practically complete. Most importantly, the know-how and intensive feedback-loop during our collaborations have enabled us to accelerate the development by at least one, if not two years. Or in other words, the value has been captured already.
Our strategy is therefore to simply switch the sequence of integrations.
Instead of starting with the Webjet OTAs and expanding to others afterwards, we will take the opportunity by exploring integrations with additional partner agencies sooner than otherwise planned, while Webjet handles the scalability challenges with their core products.
In simple terms, the goal is to provide a turnkey solution to travel agencies and utilize the existing platform that comes as a result of the integration work with Webjet.
Marketing Team Kickstart - Growing the Marketing Force with two Core Members
We have successfully completed the hiring of two new members, which marks the genesis of the digital marketing department of LockTrip:
- Digital Marketing Lead
- Head of Viral, Affiliate and Email Automation
The Marketing Lead will be responsible for the strategic planning and execution of various performance marketing campaigns in the near future. The core area of focus will be online performance campaigns with high scalability.
The second member will be in charge with the expansion and optimization of the affiliate program, as well as R&D for new methods to leverage the viral effect of LockTrip’s Product. Additionally, he will be in charge with structuring and execution of email automation.
Currently we are going through the preparations, including the strategic planning, budgeting, setup of technical tools, data analytics and the connection of management systems. Once these are complete, we will go live with the first trial-campaigns.
At the same time we have initiated the work on the email marketing campaigns that will be targeting existing users with pro-active communication.
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LockTrip is a blockchain-based travel marketplace that allows users to save up to 60% on their bookings by cutting out middlemen. Every booking burns LOC proportionally to its booking value, continuously reducing its total supply.
