Bringing Experience Economy into 2021: Why We Invested in Convious

The COVID-19 pandemic has made many people sick of being stuck at home for a long period of time. The lifting of restrictions has shown that there is an incessant desire to experience the real world. This is a great opportunity for the leisure industry or — more broadly — the experience economy. At the same time, the unstable situation poses challenges. Convious, a new company in our portfolio, addresses these problems.

A few figures about the Experience Economy

The experience economy, which includes everything from live events to travel and recreation, is worth up to €100 billion a year in Europe alone, and up to five times that amount worldwide — and still has potential for growth. Over the past few years, spending on experiences has grown 4 times faster than spending on goods. More than 70% of millennials say they prefer to spend money on experiences instead of products, and this percentage is likely to keep growing.

Lockdowns and restrictions have disproportionately affected the companies which comprise the experience economy. Amusement parks, zoos, ski resorts and museums are still struggling to convince part of the visitors to return.

The experience economy is also lagging behind other major industries when it comes to digital transformation. Before COVID, vast majority of all ticket sales transactions still took place offline.

Across industries, the pandemic has accelerated global digitization processes by several years. Companies have had to change both their internal operating models and the way they interact with contractors and customers. Consumers are increasingly choosing e-commerce over traditional shopping. Under these conditions, companies that still mostly function outside the digital world, are on a path to failure.

Meet Convious

Convious is an omnichannel one-stop-shop cloud platform for the out of home entertainment industry. Currently, their main customers are amusement and theme parks, ZOOs and acquariums, big wellness centers, ski resorts and museums.

Convious manages the entire customer journey from the first contact to the post-purchase experience. This increases customer engagement, which results in better conversions. It also generates sales via targeting and personalized marketing.

Convious offers best-in-class online ticket sales using automated real-time dynamic pricing, based on factors such as weather, seasonality, inventory, and historical data. This approach has been proven to increase revenues and also allows for a better spread of visitors over peak and off-peak hours.

The company also offers a mobile app for visitors, which allows them to purchase additional services, such as lodging or parking, and also handles all transactions during the visit such as in-venue food ordering.

Our thesis

The experience and commitment of the entire Convious team and their long-term thinking about product development was one of the key factors that convinced us to invest. Camiel, Convious founder, has the skills and experience to make the company successful, which he demonstrated with his previous ventures and roles at software companies.

Our interest in Convious was also prompted by the desire among consumers to spend more time away from home coupled with the recognition among companies in the experience economy of the need to digitize customer journey. Market trends show that within the next several years a growing percentage of tickets will be sold online directly by venues, increasingly cutting out intermediaries, similar to hotels.

We are excited to join the Convious team on their journey together with Begin Capital, FJ Labs, MillionMonkeys and Capital Mills.

By the way, Convious team are hiring across a number of various roles — check them out at https://careers.convious.com/ and spread the word in your network!