Tripsay, the Finnish social travel site offering personalized travel tips (coverage), has welcomed Alfonso Castellano as their new board member.
Castellano has made a 25+ year career in the travel industry, being Managing Director of Southern Europe for nine years at LastMinute.com, and the head of Latin American expansion and global hotel contracting and procurement. Castellano had the role of SVP Consumer business at Travelocity following its billion-dollar acquisition of LastMinute.com. This year he has statedly two travel technology/innovation related companies to launch, InnovaTravel, a seed company to support travel innovation and travel start-ups, and MindProject, providing consultancy and training in innovation, technology, marketing and distribution for travel companies.
TripSays’s service was launched a few months ago, and Castellano helps to bring in long experience and insight in building successful online travel businesses and compelling features for users and partners. Castellano’s comment indicates also that his InnovaTravel will have a stake in TripSay: “Tripsay.com will be one of the jewels of the InnovaTravel portfolio.”
The mysterious Sweden/US based startup BuzzPal has revealed us what they are all about. As the founder, Chris Comella, says in the video, BuzzPal is an advanced version of CouchSurfing with a business model and growth strategy and it seems they are going head to head with a US based startup AirBed&Breakfast.
BuzzPal aims to facilitate people to find affordable accommodation on their travels from locals living in the given destination by enabling the locals to post their offer online with a price tag, be it an available couch, bed or even a flat for a few nights. In effect BuzzPal is an online marketplace for peer-to-peer traveling.
Chris didn’t want to say exactly how they aim to monetize the service just yet. Whether they use the same model as AirBed&Breakfast which charges a 5-12% service fee from the guest during the checkout process or use for example an advertising based business model to go with the transactional one.
Even though AirBed&Breakfast is already up and running (unlike BuzzPal) BuzzPal has still a good shot at the market. AirBed&Breakfast had less than $20,000 in seed capital from friends and family when it started and has only just started gathering users: For example, when I checked they only had two places posted in Finland, five places in Denmark, four places in Sweden, none in Norway, Iceland or any of the Baltic countries. Out of these, the places on offer in say Denmark were all more expensive than for example Hotel Cabin City which is a decent choice right downtown Copenhagen.
Tripsay, the Finnish social travel site offering personalized travel tips (coverage), has welcomed Alfonso Castellano as their new board member.
Bitbar
iWillStudy.com
