From a host in Hanoi who will offer cooking classes and water buffalo tours in rice fields to private villas of the sort that will make you swoon with pleasure, Travelmob wants to offer travellers unique stays and local travel experiences in Asia Pacific through a social network of hosts and guests.
“We are creating opportunities for new hosts from villa owners to boat houses to private apartments to couches,” he said. “And the hosts that we’ve met are all excited to create opportunities for additional revenues.”
Travelmob works on a similar model as the hugely successful US-based site, AirBnB, but is staking its future as an Asia Pacific specialist, offering regional content to a global audience.
Fuad believes that just as low cost airlines changed travel in the region, so will social stay models such as Travelmob, which will enable travellers to fully fan out into local communities and also empower local communities to participate in the growing tourism pie in the region.
The site launched recently, with media events in markets such as Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, India, Australia and Hong Kong. Travelmob, which is “comfortably funded” by its two co-founders and private investors, is rolling out aggressively in a bid to create brand awareness.
“This is still a new concept in many parts of Asia and there’s a lot of education to be done. We are basically a platform play for anyone who wants to put up their services and people who participate in this must understand the constraints.”
As such, a big part of what Travelmob wants to do in this early stage, other than create demand and expand content, is to educate both hosts and guests on the etiquette of hosting and being hosted. “We want to teach people how to be good hosts and good guests. For instance, in Asia, we have different customs than in the West – you take off shoes for instance when you are in people’s homes.”
Sites like Travelmob are entering a grey area. In Singapore, local regulators have ruled that property owners who rent out their rooms or apartments to paying guests risk getting fined up to $200,000 or jailed up to a year. (See article)
And with hosts also playing guides, which Travelmob hopes will differentiate it from similar sites, where’s the line between a licensed tour guide and any local who’s just passionate about showing off their home to a foreign visitor?
Added Fuad, “We are trying to boost the total tourism industry. This kind of travel is very unique and personal, and is very enriching. We want to add value to tourism and are willing to work with different regulators to figure out all these issues.”
On the question of hosts being guides, he said, “What do you say to a taxi driver who wants to show his city off to a foreign visitor? Or a friend taking another friend around? Online social networks have blurred the lines.”
The team is currently focused on building supply, with the focus on South-east Asia. “We are finding lots of interesting places in Indonesia and Thailand and Philippines is showing good growth.”
To the observation that generally, Asians don’t like to host or stay in people’s homes – homestays are not as big in the region as say other destinations, Fuad said, “That’s why we need to spread the education. There are different segments of hosts – some cultures are very open to hosting.”
One thing in Travelmob’s advantage is the fact that there’s a huge chunk of more affluent folk in Asia who owns second homes in resort locations. “There are too many properties left idle and this could be a good way of monetizing that asset.”
With Travelmob, hosts take photos and a team of editors help spruce up the copy to make the listing more attractive. “We find that people want real photos to keep a sense of realism.”
There’s also a review section where guests and hosts can review each other to foster “good behaviour and trust”. The site is also socially integrated with networks such as Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and Instagram.
Its revenues come from a service fee of up to 12% for every successful booking. Listing is free and hosts who respond promptly and update their calendars are pushed up the listings. And given the fact that Asian consumers like to bargain, there’s a “discount creator” dashboard that allows hosts to create the discounts they want to give for stays of, say, up to 30 days.
And the first booking it saw – an Argentinian woman booking a place in Hong Kong.
Payments by guests can be made in 13 global currencies, 10 of which are Asian-denominated. Hosts can pay in up to 10 currencies. Said Fuad, “We are talking to different payment gateways to support local payments. The harder the problems you solve, the more value you add to your business.”
Fuad believes the payment problem, one of the toughest to crack across the region, can be tackled by Travelmob. “We have a good team who’ve been in the Internet industry for a long time. My co-founder, PK, started Yahoo! India and built Yahoo! mobile and videos. We’ve hired the best engineers out of Yahoo!, Skype and eBay. We want to grow fast and big.”
He’s confident that its Asian focus will enable it to achieve scale. This is what will differentiate it from other players in a similar space.
“We are building Asia first. We have all worked with global companies where we have been forced to prioritise development of certain products and we weren’t able to build particular products for specific markets.
“At Travelmob, this is all we do – build for local needs. We want world travellers to experience Asia like a local. We recognize we don’t have to solve everything on our own and are keen to work with local partners to enhance experiences.”
Travelmob is Fuad’s third start-up. He sold his first, Wuf Networks, to Yahoo! eight years ago and worked with Yahoo in the US and South-east Asia for the last five years.
