Revving up for return to pre-pandemic levels

Travel Curious, the B2B private tours marketplace and digital services provider, expects to see booking levels return to 2019 levels by 2023 as demand for experiences takes off.

Its latest Scotland Yard Hotel themed tour this week Amir Azulay, co-founder and chief executive, said the firm is emerging rapidly from the pandemic.

He said, based on just 7% capacity due to many partners not being able to sell, the company is scaling at 60% month-on-month and transacting around £2,000 worth of tours per day.

COVID-19 prompted Travel Curious to focus more on domestic tours and virtual experiences, which Azulay said had helped it to cope with the impact of the pandemic on international travel.

During the period of the pandemic, Travel Curious has gone from just four trade partners to over 70, including a major deal agreed with the Marriott as the pandemic hit.

The world is moving, and has been moving for a while now, from industries that provide services to industries that provide experiences. When we were looking at travel and what sectors were growing, tours and activities was the fastest growing segment and most of the investment is going into marketplaces. In the travel industry, when it goes through a period of digital transformation, the money usually goes to marketplaces.

What was neglected was the B2B space, the enablers, the traditional travel companies, the hotel companies who want to participate in this space but need a trusted provider

It then developed digital services on top of that marketplace through an API to enable distribution through an agent portal and booking widgets that can be added to partner websites.

Many travel agents are sitting at home now wanting to sell something to their customer base, to re-engage their customer base but do not know how.

We went into domestic tours, staycation tours and virtual tours. Agents have been getting into that in a big way. The tours and activities sector is massive, and the fact that we have turned it into a service to travel and hospitality companies means we have opened up a completely untapped market.

Travel Curious expects to see growing demand for themed experiences based on topics like the history or contemporary culture of a location.

Globally, the market is valued at $254 billion annually, and around 50% of tours are booked ahead of travel, the other half when clients are in-trip.

The average booking value for a Travel Curious tour is £282 and the average size of the group is 4.8, although that has been skewed upwards by virtual tours.

Then firm currently has 1,100 guides on its database all of whom are interviewed, properly licenced and vetted and who work with Travel Curious and its partners to create bespoke experiences.

Azulay said before the pandemic hit the company was “growing like crazy” with the Marriott deal, covering 30 cities and 600 properties, about to go live.

He said the impact of COVID-19 brought that to a halt, but he believes that Travel Curious would not have brought as many new partners onboard had it not happened.

The firm now works with many of the world’s largest tour operators, travel agents, bed banks and hotel companies including European giants Hotelbeds, Lonely Planet and Tui.

“I believe 2022 will be 50% to 70% of 2019 and we should get back to 2019 levels in 2023. From a technology point of view the logistics engine and distribution engine is built.

Right now logistically it’s a challenge matching source markets with destinations and who can travel where, but the engines are built and the content is the least of our challenges but with Europe opening up we expect to see a “boom” in bookings.