When I was planning a family trip to Goa, year and a half before, I decided to explore the option of staying in an unexplored part of Goa, away from the busy beaches. That’s when I started to search in Google and many of the popular travel portals most of which were only promoting the routine hotels and resorts. I did a lot of reading and finally was able to find some unique stay options in a remote Goan beach which was not available to book online in any travel portal.
On return from our vacation, we started our research and were curious to know why these options are not available in the popular portals. I had even spoken to several property owners across the country (many of them were not contactable by mail) and finally started planning our venture to promote such distinctive properties in the unexplored destinations of India including village stays, stays in islands, treetop stays etc.
With no past experience in this area, I did a lot of studying on this biz before venturing into it. We directly approached the property owners (in some cases, personally visited them as well) and have tied up with over 200 unique properties across the country.
We came up with a simple website listing the properties & started marketing the concept to our friends & relatives in Feb 2014. We made 20k out of our very first deal (a corporate travel deal) which gave us the push. We have been receiving good no.of enquiries since then including referrals from our satisfied friends.
Having tested waters, we decided to promote select itineraries / experiences as well in addition to the accommodations. Now, we wanted to go a little bigger (not huge!!!), with no funds in hand seeking the help of few of our friends (borrowing) to build a interactive website. We require your expertise in the following areas:-
Website Building – We were thoroughly fooled by our vendor who charged a whopping amount to build our website which did not even meet 50% of our expectations. We are now looking at building a new portal which is user friendly.
Is it better to go with a established vendor who has done some projects in the similar line? How to choose a right vendor? Can you provide some contact to seek guidance? What about hiring a temporary resource to do this job?
Pending this, Is there a scope to sell through Facebook like a product? (To keep the momentum going as our existing website is not functioning due to certain issues)
Promotions – We have been posting regularly in our FB page which has also helped us in getting leads.
Can you suggest some economical options to promote our biz?
Integration & Gateway – We oversee a big problem here. As many of the accommodations are in the remote areas with no website / email facility, we have a problem in integrating with the room bookings & accepting payments online from the clients. Can you suggest an alternate or a solution to this problem?
Angel or Crowdfunding – Is it advisable to look at Angel funding or Crowdfunding at this stage? Which one is most advisable?
We would like to have the valuable suggestions from Rodinhooders. You can drop me a mail at rps@itzvacationtime.com also.