By Luke Clark
With a calm demeanor attesting to his background in academic psychiatry, and not a tie-dyed item in sight, Dr Kris Naudts may not at first glance seem the most obvious candidate for the next empire builder in travel content.
Yet fresh from a breakthrough year for its funding, Culture Trip has boldly built its youth-propelled audience to an impressive 18 million visitors in 2018. And now with the help of some pedigree business hires, the brand has its eyes on disrupting both the media and travel industries through its mix of creative content and technology – not to mention making a few attempts at reading the minds of its customers.
Speaking to a packed room at the WiT Bootcamp 2018 in Singapore on Monday, Naudts told his coffee chat interviewer Yeoh Siew Hoon (founder, Web in Travel) that the chance to improve people’s lives rather than dwell on their problems helped drive him out of psychiatry and into the world of the travel storyteller.
“I was enjoying myself, but in research things go quite slowly,” he recalls. “And I had this urge to build and create something that was almost free from suffering.”
Using his innate creativity and a sound test-and-learn spirit, Naudts launched Culture Trip in 2011, initially with the “bad business idea” of serving as an online travel bookstore. While romantic, the business strategy proved itself to be extremely niche. “But then we started writing content around travel – writing articles around it.”
Gradually, the site expanded its content offerings to include art, design and architecture. The more visually-driven it became, the faster the audience grew. Food writing would ultimately serve as a breakthrough in terms of audience traffic.
He believes that some early reasons for Culture Trip’s eventual success came down to concept, adaptability and initial thriftiness. “I do think good businesses start with a cool idea for sure,” he notes. “Then it depends on your ability to reinvent yourself and to evolve.” And as he suggests, an unlimited budget in the beginning would have seen him build a “stupid big bookstore”.
By 2015 though, thrift was becoming hardship, as mere “drips” of funding would test the endurance of the team. Soon they’d moved from a super-small office, to eventually becoming a “truly homeless startup”, frequently kicked out of hotel lobbies because they couldn’t afford the light refreshments.
Yet despite growing pains, Culture Trip remained buoyed by its growing take-up: every six months saw its traffic double, says Naudts.
An initial US$2 million from Silicon Valley in 2015 allowed Culture Trip to push its content creation model even further around the world. Soon the brand had moved into 15 cities, with an organic audience still growing rapidly. Despite spending nothing on its traffic (the company had no marketing team until early 2018), a further US$20 million in funding was secured, followed by an additional US$80 million this year.
For Naudts and his growing business, 2018 might well represent the year that the brand can no longer slip beneath the radar: the BBC Travel Show’s Simon Calder described the site as “Lonely Planet as it might be created in the 21st century”.
With growth in its headlights, the latest funding has ushered in some business big guns too: Mike Fox, ex-Facebook, now heads Culture Trip’s marketing, while Nick Jakobi, formerly with Google, acts as chief product officer.
Yet the founder doesn’t accept that he has suddenly passed a metaphorical point of no return. “You can’t afford to fail your investors who give you US$20,000 either.”
Next up for the Culture Trip brand, noted for its advertising-free appearance? Having proven its ability to gather an audience at the inspirational end of the funnel, the site intends to head through the looking glass and pursue booking capabilities. “We are only at the top of funnel by design – we’re very focused at going down the funnel,” says Naudts. “What we want to do is find our flywheel, to drive people down and convert.”
Proud that his ambitious plan has seen the light of day, the Belgium-born CEO and founder is now looking to expand its Asia audience, currently at less than 15% of its audience – with a content production base likely in the region soon too. Asia has rich potential, he notes, with a third of its audience to social channels already coming from this region, with the Philippines already proving a social star.
The company is already making revenue through branded content, campaigns for tourism boards, and work with affiliates – while the example of content brands like Netflix or Disney inspire the company forward. If the Culture Trip experience does continue to find its wings, Naudts is confident that his hybrid model startup will be a tough act to follow. “It was a crazy idea in the beginning to cover the world in content – but that’s what we’ve done,” he notes.
Whatever the future holds for an already inspiring travel story, Naudts won’t put a cap on the site’s eventual creative offerings. He is clear on one thing though – the bookstore model is firmly out of the picture: “Where it comes full circle could be where we’re looking to make films or short films, including fiction, set in locations,” he notes. “The diversity of our creative materials makes us very different”.
Photos provided by: Shoot My Travel
