Blog homeOnline travel has evolved to be significant within the industry and has evened up the marketplace for consumers – you can now find large and small travel companies willing to sell to customers direct – some based in a customer’s own country, some based in their destination country.
However I was asked a travel related question by a client a couple of days ago and I couldn’t think where on the web I would go to ask it…..
The question I was asked was:
We currently run minibus trips based in the UK – but travelling around Europe. We are a small company and we use a supplier with a couple of minibuses. We are looking into growing our operations beyond what our current supplier can handle - do you know anyone with Europe based minibuses that can provide drivers / leaders?
To me this looks like the classic case of needing a wide network of travel industry contacts that can be used to ask, and hopefully find, an answer. This is exactly the kind of contact book that small tour operators (meaning those with less than 20 staff) don’t naturally have but should be possible to find on the web….
A couple of thoughts:
- The question could be asked via Linkedin – would that work?
- There may be an existing forum, website or email group that supports this kind of discussion (but if there is, it hasn’t come across my radar)
- Do industry bodies keep track of what products / services companies offer – and what are needed - and therefore who could be “matched” (a bit like a dating service)?
So – do you know where someone could go to get this question answered?
This may be a business opportunity as there is a potential business need to match small tour operators with potential suppliers. The ideal solution would be web based in order to reach out to all the small companies it would need to in order to reach critical mass.
In recent times much travel technology investment (including websites) has tended to be in the large travel company sector. This is probably because there is a defined business need – and the number of clients to reach critical mass remains fairly low. In the small tour operator world you need many small clients in order to have sustainable business whereas for larger travel technology companies you just need a few, but high booking volume, clients.
However, for someone willing to give this a go – you could build a solution around this business problem as highlighted above…. unless someone has got there first…. (in which case comment below!)
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