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The weekly life of a travel startup - Why is it so hard to make great burritos in London?

Every now and then, Itamar, founder of Kukunu gives us an update about the development of his own online travel start up. Enjoy.

I just came back from a fantastic trip to the US with the Seedcamp teams. For a detailed summary of our trip, you can read the great posts from Platogo and Shout’Em.

I came back with one question in mind: Why is it so hard to make great burritos in London?

Indeed, everybody keeps telling me that Burritos are much easier to make in Silicon valley. You can easily find a great recipe, the best ingredients and the right skills; while in London you are likely to struggle finding chipotle chilies or even good corn tortillas. It takes a lot of trial and error with very few tools at your disposal to find that elusive combination of flavors you know is just right.

Come to think of it, burritos are a lot like start-ups.

After spending 2 weeks in New York and the Bay Area, I have to agree that the Silicon Valley seems to be a fantastic place full of opportunities. Everyone knows were to find the best developers and the best technology, everybody knows someone with the right skills or a good idea. They have the infrastructure to create great new start ups, the eco-system is mature.

So are we doomed to eat average Burritos or to stick with jacket potatoes?

I don’t think so. I’ve met a lot of great entrepreneurs in London and some great technologies are being built across Europe. We have here a strong academic and scientific background and the ability to create fantastic IP but we are facing many obstacles when time comes to bring ideas to market. Saul Klein has written a great post on how Seedcamp is creating a distributed network for European start ups; which highlights some key differences between the US and Europe.

But on a day to day basis, I see one simple lesson for those of us in Europe: We will all make much better burritos if we start drinking more coffee.

During these 2 weeks in the US, I  met more people than I  have met in London in a year. Every single person introduced me to other people, some with great travel experience, some with lots of lessons to share from their previous start up and sometimes I’d be the one sharing my thoughts on travel, Amazon.com or online payment.

I know we have European meet ups like OpenCoffee, Minibar, OpenSoho or Mobile Monday. That’s great but not enough, and far from what I witnessed in the US. We have to share lessons learned, now!

We all need to spend more time meeting up around a good coffee, sharing ideas, lessons learned and contacts. That’s one important step towards making London and Europe the best place to build a start up; which is your best chance to succeed with your own business…

So if you want to make great burritos, I know were to find chipotle chilies in London, and I know someone who can find great corn tortillas, I might even introduce you to some great carnitas.

Share your thoughts in a comment or come meet me for coffee: itamar @ kukunu.com

And to Alasdair, Reshma and Saul: Thank you! You did a fantastic job building an extremely rewarding experience both on a professional and personal level.

eBay gives another try to Travel with Octopus Travel

According to Travolution, the famous auction site eBay has reached an agreement with Octopus Travel, a hotel consolidator who works with more than 50,000 hotels. 

Back in the 2006, eBay attempted to break into the travel market by partnering with Cultuzz. There is even a website called Cultbay which aggregates about 2000 offers right now. At least this is what I discovered at Eye for Travel at that time.

For some reasons, the travel category never took off with eBay. I have never ever come across anyone who purchased travel on eBay until today. Why?

I believe eBay is famous for tangible goods. Travel is not really tangible until you get to the hotel or you take the train. And therefore I would rather use Priceline to bid on a hotel room in New York than going on eBay. But that's another debate.

But let's take a look at what eBay Travel has to offer on the hotel side today.

To promote the newly signed partnersip with the Travelport company Octopus Travel, eBay offers you the chance to bid for Presidential Suites with Intercontinental Hotels. The sales revenue made will go to charity.

For instance, bidders can get a Presidential Suite in Mauritius for more than £500 at the moment (only 2 night stay though) or the Presidential Suite at the Grand in Paris for £1,200.

 
Besides, this promotional offer with a cause to support behind it, I am still unsure about the offers posted by hotels and operators on eBay. Have a look at this hotel listing and you will see a lot of offers expire today with no bids whatsoever.

Blog Watch #1 - The Hotel Consultant

It's time that we focus our energy again to promote newly discovered blogs that we have found on the blogosphere related to the hotel industry.

So let's start with The Hotel Consultant written by Robert Smith, a former hotel general manager who set up his own hotel consultancy and management services company called Complete Hotel Services.

Robert has started his blog in August 2009 and have since coverered different topics like how to improve hotel websites or the usage of social media with hotels.

More recently, Robert has highlighted how hoteliers can benefit from better SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and also how he currently reviews GDS connectivity and PMS company for his hotel clients.

Also check out his Twitter account

Sheraton brings a fresh look to their website

Sheraton has recently redesigned their website to make it even more "social media" friendly and announces straight away from their homepage "Welcome to our community".

Their e-commerce team has also integrated Facebook Connect. Unfortunately, the feature doesn't seeem to work on my Firefox browser. I have tried different ways to connect with my Facebook acccount, without any success.

I very much like the interactivity between reviews posted by members and the Earth globe. If you would like to see stories by genre like weddings, spa or beach, the globe tells you where you can find their latest posted stories.

If you don't have a Facebook account, you can easily post your story with just an email address. The registration form looks very easy.

Holiday Inn warm up your bed in your room with...

According to The Telegraph, the US hotel chain Holiday Inn (part of Intercontinental Hotel Group) is going to warm up your bed in your room with human blankets. Apparently, people sleep sooner if the bed is warm vs. cold. So you don't feel tired in the morning.

Smart or weird?

(Disclosure: it is not 1st April yet)

Where is the Music gone in hotels?

There was a time where Music was sometimes associated with Hotels. And I am not talking about the spiritless elevator music we are used to in supermarkets, waiting halls and so on.

But too often, Music was a bit boring and all sounded the same. Until one hotel brand came out with the perfect association. Hotel Costes (with a terrible website in my opinion) is probably one of the fewest hotel brands that got recognised by its CDs more than by his rooms. The label behind the Costes collection CDs is still releasing one new CD every year and promotes successfully DJs like Pompougnac.




Back in 1999, Costes obviously was making a bet but it worked. The same applied for the famous Buddha Bar and its huge collection of CDs compilations and mixes.

Today with the right set up, you can have music in the lobby, in the bar, in the restaurant and in the rooms (remember that music played on the welcoming message on the TV set in your room).

But how come no other hotel chains or independant hotels followed up this initiative. I can see Music being one more personal touch about how your hotel brand is represented. And it doesn't have to be about selling CDs.

In 2010, you can simply register to different online music services like Last.fm or Deezer and make up your own playlist that most represent your hotel "audio" DNA.




For instance imagine I run this 30 room hotel in Florence. I come up with my playlist and export it to my website. If people want to play the playlist while browsing my site (and eventually book) they already know a bit more about my hotel.

 Text + Visuals + Sounds brings closeness to potential customers.

And then you can even sell the playlist thanks to Amazon.co.uk Associates services or iTunes.

Four Seasons recently have used a lot of YouTube to promote their hotels and they associated the video with some music background. But does the Music background is recognizable enough to relate to Four Seasons (Vivaldi anyone?).

I know there is the problem with royalties but there is music catalogue available  as well that woudn't cost you much http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/hotel-music.htm. Besides,  have always heard that licences to play music in your hotel/ bar was not a big cost on your annual budget anyway.

HipHotels who is more famous for publishing hotel books (I own most of them) have released 2 CDs. As you can see the compilation is very diverse.http://www.hiphotels.com/music.php?cc=69.

W Hotels also attempted to create a CD collection as well. But they seem to have discontinued the collection.

But in today's digital world, you don't need to have physical support. Just create a playlist, share it with your customers in different areas of your hotel and why not have them contributing to a larger playlist.

Feel free to share your playlist on the comment box.

Goodbye 2009... Welcome 2010!

First of all, I wish you all a Happy New Year.

I am glad we've turned the page of 2009. It was the thoughest year I have ever experienced as far as the hotel industry is concerned.

Besides the fact a lot of innovative online tools like Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube, Wordpress were made available to the hotel industry to dramatically embrace Web 2.0, Hotels still have doubts to implement these tools in their marketing strategy in 2010.

Time is running out.

Hotels who haven't tried to use these sites will be left behind unless they still have money to spend in heavy PR. Hotels who still have doubts over the power of social media have lost the plot in my mind.  Hotels who complain that review sites give them a bad name because consumers leave bad comments about their stay have also lost the game we live in in the 21st century.

Thanksfully, I have seen last year a majority of hoteliers who are very keen to change things in the way they market their hotels (more recently in Dublin during a conference held in November 09). I have also met and discussed with talented "new kids on the block" who are willing to disrupt the online travel industry. Too many to mention, just have a look at the interviews I have made here and there.

2010 will be a promising year where things will get eventually back to normality. Whatever that means. Online technology changes so rapidly these days that whatever works for you today might not work in 6 months time. You constantly need to update yourself about what's new in social media and what you can use for the benefit of your business. Clearly 2009 was a major year for Twitter. And even within the hospitality industry, Twitter is known as a major social media tool to use from now on (even HEDNA uses it, would you believe it!).

As far as Hotel Blogs is concerned, I hope that you will still be interested about the content we create through comments, articles, video interviews, demos and so on. We are running now for the 4th year running. Something I would be keen to do is to bring more contributors to write on Hotel Blogs. Especially experts in countries. If you are interested let me know.

Last but not least, I would like to thank the support we had from our sponsors in 2009. You know who you are (check their sites on the right upper side of the site).

Thank you again for your loyal readership, your comments and your support.

Let's start with 2010 a fresh new decade of innovation within the hospitality industry!

Best regards,

Guillaume

My presentation at Hotel Website Marketing conference in Dublin

You might remember that I was talking to the Hotel Website Marketing conference held in Dublin last month. Ciaran and his team did a great job to organize a day event with good speakers and 150 hoteliers.

Here's my presentation on video where I present 7 new ways to distribute your hotel online. For some reasons, the conversion on blip.tv has cut down the right side of the video :-(   .

Hotel-Blogs presentation at Hotel Website Conference

Video Interview with Jerome Touze, Co-Founder of WAYN.com - #leweb

Last interview from me from Le Web held in Paris last week. I was very excited to catch up with Jerome Touze who is the co-founder of WAYN.com, the travel social networking sites who have more than 15M members. In this interview, you will hear from some new features happening on the site, how the site has evolved in the last 3 years and also the re-opening of a paid subscription model where you can access some sort of a "VIP" club with many advantages like upgrade on car rental, discount in hotels and so on. Enjoy the interview and as always feel free to comment.

The weekly life of a travel startup - Goodbye the web, Hello Le Web

This week was a pretty busy week with the 6th iteration of LeWeb in Paris, organised by Geraldine and Loic Lemeur. I arrived in Paris on Sunday and enjoyed the comfort of a lovely Parisian flat and a great office thanks to the fantastic hospitality of Gary (@garycige) from Zilok.

I met several VCs on Monday and Tuesday and quickly discovered that many French investors do get travel and the opportunity for innovation and disruption. Between meetings I could focus on my presentation for LeWeb and enjoy some fantastic food and wine.

The highlights of LeWeb…

* Christopher Sacca (@sacca) on stage (man, you made me want to become a porn-star) check it out here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2860866

* Gary Vaynerchuk on stage, just crush it.

* Many other magic presenters and a great winner for the Startup competition: Stribe, with a really cool product.

* And of course a great presentation of Kukunu, see coverage on Techcrunch here: http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/12/09/leweb-kukunu-wants-to-be-your-travel-agent-online/

I ended the week back in London for a fantastic Seedsummit where, together with the other Seedcamp finalists, I had the opportunity to pitch in front of investors. Being able to discuss Kukunu with people like Brent Hoberman, Martin Varsavsky, Dave McClure and Jeff Clavier was magic.

This is the end of a pretty exciting week, in the meantime Gerald (my co-founder) developed some great new features that we are beta testing right now. Sign up on http://www.kukunu.com to participate in the private beta, we should extend it in the coming weeks.

Video Interview with Hotelaparis.com & Benoot.com - #leweb

To continue with a serie of interviews I conducted at Le Web 09 in Paris last week, this video conversation takes place outside le 104 with Remy Pastel from hotelaparis.com and Emilie Agniel and Benoit Laurent from Benoot.com. 3 French entrepreneurs talking to a French guy in English. Note the major effort we had to make during this interview!

Video Interview with Yohannes Reck from GetYourGuide.com - #leweb

Whilst I was attending Le Web 09 conference in Paris last week, I have met with Yohannes Reck, Founder & CEO at GetYourGuide.com who recently pitched at the GetFundedShow during World Travel Market.

European Gang Live - #leweb '09

The European Gang  is starting the conversation.

Paul Carr is moderating the panel.

It doesn't matter where you are based. You can be based in Austria and build an online business aimed at American.

You can build business outside Silicon Valley.

Brent Hoberman explains that the example of Skype is extremely rare in European ventures out there. The issue we have is scaling in Europe compared to the US (regulations, languages, cultures).

Mike Butcher highlights the fact there is no war between US and European entrepreneurs. In Europe, entrepreneurs are fitghting with governments against regulations that don't help them to build businesses (tax is one for instance, works regulations is another one).

There is a lot of debate between whether cloning succesful American ventures make sense in Europe. The whole idea that American can came up with the best ideas is obviously not true. The first mover advantage is also unfounded in many instances on online businesses.You don't need to be the first in a specific market to be succesful.

Tony Hsieh from Zappos.com - #leweb '09

The CEO of Zappos.com on stage now telling the story behind his venture which was sold to Amazon.com earlier this year for more than 1B$.

2008 saw Sales revenue reaching more than $1B revenue from 0 in 2000.

Cultture is #1 priority and hiring the right people takes a good place into building the business.

Zappos applies the 3 Cs (Culture, Customer Service and Clothing).

'Good to Great' (Jim Collins) and 'Trival Leadership' are two inspirational books we ask employees to read when they join us.

One of the things Tony would do differently now is to state the core values of the company from day 1.

HR would do the traditional interviews but also another set of interviews to see whether a candidate for any vacancy would fit with the company culture.

Ask yourself "What is your goal in life?" and if you find answers, ask yourself "Why?". Not many people ask themselves this question often to reach happiness.

Another book Tony recommends to read 'Happiness Hypothesis'

Fantastic presentation.Highly recommend to watch it again on ustream.

Roundtable around money raising with VCs - #leweb '09

A different bunch of VCs and small funds on stage talk about deals they have made this year in terms of investment.

Did they see any major change that happened in the last 12 months?

Valuation of companies are up again, unreasonably. Some firms have raised some incredible amount of money because funds have some deep pockets and need to invest in something very quickly.

Having said that, most of VCs fundraising has been down this year.

There has been a shift of money from smaller funds to bigger funds.

Most of private companies that do well get bought before they go public (Skype, PayPal...).

Do you need to raise millions of money to start up your company on the Internet today? The game has changed from late 90's where servers were expensive and Internet costs a lot.

Also it looks like VCs are chasing for deals rather than deals coming through their ears I wonder what entrepreneurs (who try to raise money today) think about that statement.

Voices from Europe #leweb '09

So we have a table of successful entrepeneurs in Europe moderated by Brent Hoberman, former CEO and founder of Lastminute.com.

How do we help entrepreneurs to buid businesses in Europe?

A lot of innovation comes from Europe but Europe hasn't reached yet a critical mass.

When you build a business on the web, don't think too much about countries.

Is it harder to scale pan European businesses?

In Europe, the recognition of companies is based on size rather than on potential to grow.

The Wealth tax used to fund startups in France seems to work very well. What about other European countries copying the model?

Does it matter than most platforms are in the US and Europe doesn't have their own ecosystem to build online businesses?

China is around the corner to take on the internet world.

In Europe, we have a mentality of fears about failing. Entrepreneurship is not about winning all the time. Failure is not well accepted in the Old Continent besides the enormous experience you can gain for your next venture or your next job.

Chad Hurley YouTube - #leweb 09

Chad Hurley CEO (still) and founder of YouTube is on stage with Loic Le Meur.

A billion video are viewed per day.

24hours of video per minute loaded on the video platform.

The idea of YouTube was about simplifying the process of loading the video and share it with your community.

What's coming up on YouTube? Need to find a better way to find what you want.  Work with other social networkings to share the video you uploaded.

YouTube is on mobile platforms.

Niklas Zeenstrom - #leweb '09

Niklas Zeenstrom on stage has founded numerous companies like Kazaa, Joost, Skype, Rdio and also a fund called Atomico Ventures.

When you are becoming an entrepreneur, you are totaly immersed into your venture days and nights. You give up hobbies and your day job.

The common theme for entrepreneurs is about opportunities. When you are in Europe. Think Europe as a market rather than looking at each individual countries. This is a better way to scale a product to compete with entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.

It's unlikely we will have a Silicon Valley in Europe soon (==> this doesn't sound optimistic).

Community is inside of us - #leweb '09

Chris Pirillo turned "media into mediocrity". Ouch!

Community is inside everyone of us. And the reasons we get hooked to use a device like the iphone is not about the company but much more about the culture behind the company.

Community is increasingly distributed.

Community requires tools that can't be built.

Community is a commodity, but people aren't.

It's good to hear people saying bad things about your product. The worst case scenario is where people don't say anything. It means your product/tool is not used and people don't care.

Don't try to control a community, just guide it. You control your product, not the community you've embraced or tried your product.

Community is no longer defined by physical boundaries.

Orange App Shop is open - #leweb '09

Orange App Shop is multi device and multi platforms.

A majority of apps are about local services. So the Orange shop is localized per country based on specific local requirements.

5,000 apps are already available on the App Shop.

Will need to check this out since my BlackBerry is on Orange UK.