Product

Travel is a trillion-pound industry stuck in the past. The emergence of online agencies like Booking.com marked the last major innovation as they aggregated hotel inventory. However, travel planning remains a time-intensive and manual process, with people spending upwards of 10 hours to book a trip.

Public data on different destinations, forms of transport and restaurants is widely available. Combined with private travel data, e.g. activity and food preferences, it forms a valuable data source.

This dataset can then be harnessed by large language models (LLMs) to facilitate conversations that reveal insights and offer tailored recommendations.

Similar to high-end travel agencies, Voyago integrates with 3rd party providers and books the whole trip for you.

Voyago is a travel super app that offers a fast, personalised and seamless booking experience.

Speed - Reduce the time to find suitable options as AI parses through hundreds of reviews and websites

Personalised - Curate a tailored itinerary to meet your specific needs

Centralised - Access everything including accommodation, transport, and experiences under one platform

Founder

James Butler, Founder & CEO - Previously design manager at Shopify and product/design lead at Booking.com. BA - Media Production, University of Lincoln

Spotlight Analysis

Strengths

• Founder/market fit: having built the Booking Assistant and Travel Communities offering for Booking.com, the founder has strong domain expertise

• Product differentiation: a move away from the traditional search UI (user interface) will prevent aggregators from competing directly

• Strong tailwind: a combination of rising travel demand and desire for personalisation should fuel Voyago’s growth

Weaknesses

• Partnerships: slow onboarding processes for accommodation, transport, and experience providers will hinder progress

• Defensibility: the quality of the recommendation engine will be similar across early entrants, and will only improve as they build proprietary datasets

Market

Tripnotes - Raised $3.5m seed round from Accel and Lakestar in September 2021

Bigfoot - Raised unknown seed round in 2021

Key Details

Year founded: 2023

Summary: Voyago is a travel super app that offers a fast, personalised and seamless booking experience.

Currently raising: Yes, aiming for £400k but TBC

If you would like an intro to the founder, please reply to this email.

Note: if this email ended up in promotions/spam, make sure to move it to the primary folder if you are using Gmail, or check out these instructions if you use other mail providers.