Since 2006 the travel industry has benefited from the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS), a standard for how data is accessible across industry stakeholders. This has opened up services like Google Maps to clearly show users how to get from A to B in the most efficient way. Unfortunately, this level of standardised data does not exist in the third largest sector of the Tourism Industry “ the experiences sector’. The experiences sector is highly fragmented made up of hundreds of thousands of small businesses offering activities, tours, festival, attractions and events. With the market estimated to be worth over $150bn globally there is a huge opportunity for making the industry more accessible. A key player like Google could set to set out data standards, being a big driver behind GTFS, but it‘s unclear whether this would be a strategy Google would follow and whether the major online travel agents and stakeholders of the market would collaborate.
One organisation seeking to improve the data challenge in the industry is Beyonk, a UK based start-up backed by £2.5m of venture-capital with a mission to make it effortless to experience. CEO Oscar White states, the experiences sector is still very much behind the times when comparing it to other markets. Leaflets in hotels and listing or blogging websites are still the norm. With the rise of major platforms like Amazon and Uber, consumer expectations are ever evolving and less forgiving for poor experiences. Consumers favour convenience, flexibility and rich data. By making it easier to access and share the real-time availability data in the experiences sector, the market as a whole can grow and we support the businesses get found and booked with online.
White, states, the sector is highly fragmented, largely because the operations of these businesses is so diverse – from high frequency attraction ticketed events to bespoke multi-day tours. There struggles to be a system that has catered to each of these segments. Beyonk has built a complex algorithm to cater for the vast differences in availability management across the wide-ranging businesses. The algorithm allows for managing staff scheduling, equipment availability and a myriad of configuration options to suit a wide range of flexible ways to use the software.
Beyonk differs from all other platforms in that it provides booking software to all sectors of the experiences market from businesses themselves, and to re-sellers too. This means for businesses who upload their tickets to Beyonk, they can share their tickets across major platforms at the click of a button including land-owners, destination promoters, travel websites and accommodation platforms.
As a result of supporting a wide range of businesses, and working with hundreds of resellers in different destinations, Beyonk have built up user models which outline consumer behaviour, confidence and trends. With this data, they’re able to more accurately forecast what products and at what prices are likely to do well in different regions. Beyonk are also able to tell businesses how they’re performing compared to their overall region in terms of seasonality.
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CEO Oscar White states, The future of tourism is in making it as easy as possible for businesses to be connected to major platforms, local resellers and their customers.
