The Pluto September update

It’s the beginning of September and we wanted to share what we’ve been up to, and we’ve been very busy indeed. Let’s get straight to it.

This is what we’ll be covering in this update:

• Pinboard is live and out in the wild
• Pluto is a finalist for Best Insurance App, Best Travel Insurance Provider and Innovation of the Year
• Our antiracism, diversity and inclusion Pledge got some PR coverage
• Quick update on travel recovery

Pinboard is live and out in the wild

Last weekend, we launched Pinboard to our existing customers. This is the most significant update to Pluto since we launched our insurance product a year and half ago. Pinboard will be free to use and available to anyone.

In case you’ve been ignoring us for the past few months, here’s a refresher on what Pinboard is:

• Pinboard is a travel planning tool that makes it easy to create and share travel plans.
• Unlike our travel insurance, this is a free to use tool and available to anyone, anywhere in the world. It’s available within our existing iOS mobile app.
• With Pinboard, you can organise everything you need for your trip in one place and plan trips with friends without the hassle.
• You can also explore curated Pinboards from like-minded travellers. We’ve launched with over 20 specially curated Pinboards for some incredible destinations.

And, here’s why Pinboard is so important to us as a business:

• Pinboard is an inherently social and viral product. People rarely travel alone, so will be planning trips with other people. And, no recommendation is better than one from a trusted friend. There’s no other purpose built service today for sharing what you did on holiday, where you ate and where you stayed.
• It paves the way for new revenue streams. From helping with hotel bookings to restaurant reservations and transport, Pinboard is set to become a hub for other products.
• It will act as a cheaper and more effective entry point for acquiring insurance buying customers and it gives them another reason to always stay with Pluto.
• It’s more pandemic resilient. Unlike travel insurance, Pinboard can be used for those trips you’re just thinking about over the next few months. Also, it’s perfect for planning your staycations and trips within the UK.
• And finally, there are no age or geographic restrictions to using Pinboard. Again, this is different to insurance which has an age cap and only for UK residents.

But, instead of reading about it, try it! And, please share with your friends and family.

Finalist for Best Insurance App, Best Travel Insurance Provider and Innovation of the Year

The Insurance Choice Awards are the only insurance awards that are decided on by the public. So we’re massively humbled to be a finalist for three awards:

• Best Insurance App
• Best Travel Insurance Provider
• Innovation of the Year

But, we need your help to win. Please take 20 seconds to vote for us, where you’ll also be entered into a £1,000 prize draw.

And, if you’re feeling heroic, a re-share on LinkedIn or Twitter would be amazing!

Our antiracism, diversity and inclusion Pledge got some PR coverage

Hopefully, you will have already seen the Pledge we shared and are committed to internally to become an antiracist, diverse and inclusive business. We realised early on that the biggest impact we might be able to have was through influencing or encouraging other startups to consider what they can do to be better.

So, we were very happy that this picked up in some travel industry press, Phocuswire and TTG. In addition, I was then also invited to speak at Phocuswright 2020 at the Innovation Spotlight, where I got the opportunity to talk more about Pinboard but more importantly our Pledge.

We continue to monitor our own sales numbers carefully, but also within the context of the wider travel market and how the recovery (or non-recovery) is shaping up. It’s still clear we are some way off from normal and travel confidence on the whole remains low due to the increasingly erratic travel restrictions from the UK government. The sentiment that we’re hearing is that it’s incredibly difficult to book a trip away with any confidence at the moment. And, if people aren’t getting on planes, then they aren’t buying travel insurance.

That’s why our week on week sales are around 60% down from January this year. They are recovering though and are up around 50% from the month before. This is another reason why the launch of Pluto Pinboard is so important. It allows us to engage with our existing customers, but also a huge number of newer customers who are starting to think about their next trip or even their next weekend break in the UK.

That’s all for this month, thanks for reading. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email me.

Alex and Team Pluto

Originally published at https://blog.pluto.travel on September 8, 2020.