Porter
About Us
At Porter, we’re building a personalized travel companion with our users throughout their travel experience, not just at the point of booking.
This is in response to the traditional online travel agents, who have built a one-size-fits-all product that overwhelms users with information and thousands of options. Further, these incumbent players have built a model that rewards them, not the consumer, by prioritizing the highest paying commission results.
In contrast, Porter is focused on being there to help our members discover great matched hotels, experiences, flights etc. Helping them effortlessly book, and then helping them experience and enjoy their holiday.
That third part is where we stand out from the rest of the market, and for us, there are three key areas we’ll be focusing on.
- Advice/knowledge (this is essentially Waze for travel, where we’ll be crowdsourcing insights and data from our community, e.g. taxi prices, recommendations, travel adapter type etc.)
- Experience/booking (this is all about connecting you with great things to do while you’re away, e.g. booking a table for you at a great restaurant).
- Dynamic travel (so in the scenario where you book all of your holidays with Porter, we’ll know if your flight gets delayed, so we can automatically update the time of your transfer bus, so you don’t miss it when you land).
Investment Highlights
£250k (with the option to overfund to £600k).
Pre-money valuation of £1.8m.
SEIS and EIS relief are available. (c£50k of SEIS remaining and being issued on a first-come, first-served basis).
Have received £145k through advanced subscriptions.
Targeting 20-40x ROI for investors in this round.
The focus of this round is to accelerate product development and growth, focusing on moving towards revenue generation. We’re targeting £10k monthly revenue by the middle of 2022 and c£25-35k monthly by the end of 2022.
Vision and Value Proposition
Our vision is to create a digital travel companion, helping our members throughout the entire travel experience, not just at the point of booking.
Our vision is to create a digital travel companion, helping our members throughout the entire travel experience, not just at the point of booking.
The Problem
Booking a holiday is stressful and time-consuming.
- There’s too much choice. Existing providers confuse travelers with an overwhelming array of options.
- The information is irrelevant. No provider offers a tailored, personalized experience, catering to each user’s requirements.
- He travel industry is fragmented. Discovering and booking relevant things during your holiday requires hours of research and navigating numerous different sites.
Target Market and Opportunity
The global online travel agent market is worth £440bn and is expected to grow to £580bn by 2023. The opportunity is worth over £35bn to online travel agents in the UK alone.
However, this is a market characterized by dissatisfaction. 60% of people report feeling disappointed with their holiday experience. This is due to the paradox of choice perpetuated by online travel agents promoting overwhelming options.
Porter has identified a niche to provide a personalized booking experience catered to affluent travelers. The market opportunity is large enough to sustain a new travel unicorn, and Porter is confident it can achieve £100m revenue in 7 years.
The Solution
Porter is a personalized travel companion with our members throughout their travel experience. That means:
- Helping them discover great matched hotels, flights, experiences etc.
- Helping them effortlessly book.
- Helping them experience and enjoy their holiday by providing relevant local knowledge and insights, experience recommendations and bookings, and dynamic transport options.
Business Model
Porter earns up to 15% commission on bookings made.
In the future, we’ll earn commission from more products (currently just hotels), offer Amazon Prime style tiered membership, and will possibly explore offering insights or aspects of Porter B2B.
Traction and Validation
Beta launched with over 2,500 beta users testing the site and a few thousand pounds worth of hotels booked through our beta partnership with Booking.com.
Talented team assembled with experience spanning development, UX, product and marketing.
Marketing and Sales Strategy
Porter plans to acquire users through a blend of paid social, organic channels (social, content and SEO), PR, referrals and influencer marketing.
We’ve already tested our early marketing during our beta phase and acquired users at a blended CPA of £5.67.
Table of Contents
Team
CEO
Has previous startup experience and product management, business consulting, marketing and recruitment experience with a large FTSE100 company. Was recently named as one of Wales 2021 Rising Stars.
