Why we built the travel product in the middle of the pandemic
This is a ridiculously odd time for launching the travel-tech products. In this story of I share, why we built TravelRank, and why we’re launching it in the middle of corona-crisis.
TravelRank is the travel destination recommender powered by AI and neural network. We made it for frequent travelers like us, productivity geeks, who prefer to make quick and data-informed, deliberate decisions and tired of endless googling.
Why we built this?
We started working on this in a pre-COVID era, just about a year ago. I and my family were still traveling a lot, at least once per 2–3 months. I did all the planning and booking. Searching destinations, flights, prices, places, etc. Saving it into the spreadsheets. Where it immediately became outdated and cluttered.
I felt drained doing this tedious searches every two months. So as many other travelers, as I discovered afterward through my customer research and reports from this field.
I was looking and didn’t manage to find any tool, that had everything which I needed:
- Combined travel history and stats (with the scratch-map look and feel)
- Destinations (ideally pre-filtered, based on my travel history and preferences)
- Single-best flight date, price, and carrier suggestion (for the pre-selected destinations)
- Social features (ranks, trending places, places visited by my friends, etc).
So I decided to build one for myself and like-minded travel enthusiasts.
Nearly about the same time the well-known travel company Thomas Cook (where I’ve been working as a booking API PM) collapsed under the financial difficulties. So I decided to use this pause and concentrate on my own project full-time. I did some refresher on JS (didn’t code for the past 10 years), learned the React basics with the help of my buddy Ruslan, who’s agreed to support me in this journey in the role of the founding developer (and later the CTO). Then I studied ML, data-science, AWS stack, MongoDb, Node.js, and lots of other stuff.
We went on the mission to replace all the travel research heavy-lifting with just a few clicks via the AI and automation. So travelers like me can do less planning and enjoy more traveling.
Our value proposition and key difference. We aim to:
- Replace manual search and filters with accurate predictions
- Offer unique and personalized travel recommendations
- Save the time and nerves
As folks from Hopper famously noted, people don’t want more filters, they want better content.
Why now?
According to a 2009 study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, an extraordinary 57% of Fortune 500 companies have been founded in a recession or bear market (source).
The crisis is the time of opportunity (if find how to use it right). Thousands of startups and even some well-established companies went off travel and mobility businesses. Others are shrinking in size dramatically, closing the R&Ds and new perspective directions (Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia), and many experiencing serious financial issues (Travelport, Tripadvisor, Sabre).
The competition in new innovative areas became weaker, cause many companies are in “survival” mode.
While we didn’t manage to build everything that we wanted at once (social features, etc), done is better than perfect… We need feedback from the target audience and validation before we could continue, that’s why we can’t hold it until the pandemic ends.
So give it a try, add your travel history, check if personalized travel recommendations hold value for you along with your travel stats and rank, and let us know, what was your impression. What features were useful and why? What features are missing and why you need it?
We hope that you can put TravelRank recommendations into practice after travel safety improves. Meanwhile, we encourage you to be safe and avoid traveling. Stay healthy!
Cheers,
Alex & Ruslan, founders of TravelRank
