Latest / Reframe First / Dan O´Beirne, Founder of Magical Private Travel | Luxury Custom Trips Beyond Tourist Routes
Transcript
- Oleksij Rak: Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Reframe First. I'm Alexey, the host of the podcast. Let me welcome our today's Dan Ubern, founder of Magical Private Travels. Hi, Dan. Great having you here. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, thanks for joining. magical travels, private travels is a world with intelligence. It's about specializing in three countries from what I understand it's Spain, Portugal, Morocco. It's about custom tours and itineraries. And it's American owned boutique private travel company working in Spain. So ⁓ could you tell us more about like... about the company and about what you're building. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, basically, yeah, I came to Spain over over 20 years ago and, and I did one of the ⁓ one of the bus tours for a few days and, ⁓ and I realized it was kind of, ⁓ it was good because Spain is so beautiful. And then I did the same thing in Portugal, the same thing in Morocco, just to kind of get my feet on the ground. But I realized that we were just seeing the same Oleksij Rak: Good. Mm-hmm. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: kind of cookie cutter itineraries and that we were missing out on, we were going where all the tourists were going. And you know, that's better than nothing, you know, ⁓ but I found later on when I traveled with some friends and made local friends that I got a whole different experience. And so that's why I decided to create this business so that I could kind of share that insider's look. at Spain, Portugal and Morocco with other Americans like me that maybe, yeah, maybe we want to see some of the big sites that everybody goes to, but you also probably want to do things away from the tourist and you want to go where locals might go and have the, not the tourist traps ever, but you want to have, maybe it's great food, maybe you want to see great art, great music, or you want to go hiking in a place. Oleksij Rak: . . Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: That's the most beautiful place around that. For example, Madrid or Lisbon or Seville or, or Marrakesh and down in Morocco, something like that. So kind of, it's kind of a more personalized way to travel. ⁓ because, ⁓ you know, at end of the day, everybody's so busy and we feel like time well spent is the ultimate luxury. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, yeah, for sure it is. And what's the segment of travel do you serve for? What I understand is like mostly luxury travel and... Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, it's of course, has different levels like everything, know, so we kind of look at it as three levels. we have the private, we call it luxury light, which is ⁓ someone that wants private services, but they don't want to spend a huge amount on the hotels. we would, but they still want to be comfortable, safe and clean places. So we would go with four star boutique. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, I that. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: hotels and still have the private tours and, and, know, tailor making the trip so that, ⁓ so once again, you're not wasting time doing something you're not interested in ever. And then we could go up to like the, you know, all five stars or, and at the top of the top end, have some people who want, you know, the, very best of the best, the ultra luxury properties, which, which you could find, you know, in the bigger cities of Spain, Portugal and Morocco. Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: So we do those activities. The activities also, like for example, at the very top end people might want a private jet or they might want a helicopter transfer across the Straits of Gibraltar. You do a ferry transfer or a normal flight, but the helicopter saves you time and it's more private. So that's not the typical thing for us, but that's what... Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Maybe 10 % of our customers want that. But most of them want to ⁓ have the big experiences, but they don't want the most expensive. That would be the bread and butter of what we do. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, so it's like four stars plus, four stars to ultra luxury. And with regards, like you mentioned a few times, personalized experiences, trips, itineraries, so on. So from what I understand, you're kind of packaging the whole deal. So it's like from getting there, transfers. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yes Oleksij Rak: Accommodation, tours, itinerary items. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, whatever. Yeah, but that's it basically from arrival until arrival until departure. We kind of the other I think the other value ⁓ big value that we offer is that you if you do it yourself, you know, and I travel independently a lot. ⁓ But if I book ⁓ if I book everything myself, I still have to manage it. Right. And I have to ⁓ make sure what if the guide is is late or the guy doesn't show up? Oleksij Rak: Thank Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Or what if the guide is supposed to speak English really well and they don't? You know, if I'm booking it myself, I don't really have any recourse at that moment because my opportunity at that time block, you know, let's say we went to last year, we were in Pompeii, Italy. And that was the case. I booked a who was recommended, ⁓ great recommendations. The problem is this guy wasn't available. Oleksij Rak: Yep. ⁓ Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: He was overbooked. And so he sent his cousin and his cousin was was charming. He was a wonderful guy, but he didn't really know Pompeii and it didn't have great English. And I had family members of mine who don't speak, you know, Italian or Spanish. And so they really didn't understand him. And so we ended up, you know, we had a nice time, but we didn't we missed the opportunity to have an amazing time, you know, and so. Oleksij Rak: you . Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: That's one of the things we do. a guy had, you the guides are humans, they might get sick, they might have a problem. And if that happens, we have to be able to have a substitute that keeps the show on the road at a high level. Oleksij Rak: So you like provide like two kinds of services. First one is like to organize everything, book everything. And another one is to support the travelers through the... Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yes, yeah, yeah, we have actually it's pretty standard in this area of the industry to have you have a 24 seven support person. But one of the little secrets is some of the big agencies, have the 24 seven support in a call center in some other country. And so if you get a call, if you have someone who has ⁓ they have to then call the local, they're probably contracting out with Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: agencies in the other countries, sometimes multiple contractors. So it's hard to get resolution if you do have a problem. ⁓ And one of the things we do is we all we have 24 seven people in each country. ⁓ So that we're able to, you know, to make sure that, you know, everything is not only resolved, but resolved quickly if there is some kind of hiccup. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, yeah, I see. And what does it take to compose a trip like that? Because it sounds like quite a lot of different tasks to do. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, there's a lot of moving parts, you know. well, mean, the first thing we do is a conversation. We always start with a conversation, no obligation, just to get to know the people because everybody's different. And we ask people a few questions like, know, please, you know, tell me about the best vacations you've had ⁓ and what were the special moments, you know, what made them special. And then Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: the other side of the coin, if you will, is what were some moments that maybe you didn't like? What were some problems that maybe came up so that we could understand both sides of ⁓ their perspective? And then we create a custom plan. We send it to them to get their feedback and iterations. It's usually just like... just like building software probably you have to do iterations and same thing here. We're building iterations to try to come up with a personalized plan that if it's a family or a group of friends or a couple, ⁓ we still try to have something for each person. So ⁓ does that make sense? Oleksij Rak: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And do you have any automations in place? Because I think there is quite a lot of them. There is room for automation, I would say. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, well, we're using a ⁓ SAS ⁓ service just to help with the construction of the itinerary. there's not an AI component to build it that we're satisfied with. Maybe somebody will create that in the future, because at the moment, we're still using a lot of human, of H.I., you know, we call it. So human intelligence and H.E., human empathy. So we try to, you know, just use our own empathy and talking to the people and conversing with them and then also emails and to come up with ⁓ something that we feel would be, you know, meaningful for those people. Oleksij Rak: How much, like, if it's not a secret, how much is lost in this kind of, how do you call it, H.I., human intelligence? How much can be saved if there are, like, good enough tool sets for that, AI tool sets? Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah. you're saying how could we build a and use that you know translate Oleksij Rak: How much could you say is the proper toolset? Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: ⁓ how much could we save? Good question. Probably a few hours per ⁓ iteration. So ⁓ yeah, it could be a valuable thing, especially if we were dealing with more volume. ⁓ So at the moment to deal with more volume, have to just keep, and I'm sure this is going to go to the. this is where AI agents will probably have a role, because at the moment you just have to add more ⁓ human talent and assume and hope that they're gonna do, and that quality control is really hard when you're doing something like this. Oleksij Rak: By iteration, you mean like every single step or iteration is like the whole process of making the itinerary. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: So if, well, for example, if a person, I mean, we could have some basic suggestions, like let's just say a person, their main interest was the best food and wine in Spain and Portugal. you we would give, know, have, yeah, we have the regions, we know where, so we know the where, and then we need to add in, you know, what kind of, what kind of. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. This is the iteration. What? Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: the sequence, how many days, what time of year. ⁓ And then of course there's usually other activities that people have. Maybe someone is interested in books and they want to see one of the oldest and most beautiful bookstores in the world that's in Portugal. Or maybe someone else is also interested in ⁓ hiking ⁓ and seeing the sunset ⁓ somewhere and then maybe having a wine tasting, watching the sunset. some kind of experience like that, or maybe someone else wants to a crew, you know, a private sailing and, you know, to go to have a picnic somewhere, you different little experiences too that we kind of add. It's like adding spice to something if you're cooking. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Yeah, I see. yeah, actually that sounds a lot on a scale. So if there is a scale, this few hours on each iteration, they do it up a lot. yeah, sure. Before, I was hearing a lot before that AI cannot replace human because there is a lot of specific domain knowledge in each region in her. the ways to operate in culture, culture differences and all that kind of stuff. But yet you are saying that AI agents can come into play at some point. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: don't know. mean, maybe, maybe I don't. Oleksij Rak: Because you as a founder of your business, from what I understand, you care about efficiency. You want a safe cost probably. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, well, mean, from, if we were, I think there may be a case for like a building, an internal, an internal, you know, agent, it's got GBT or Claude or something that would be able to, to do some of, to do more of this. So, ⁓ but, ⁓ yeah, at the same time, I know that one of the things that's concerning in our industry is, ⁓ of course there's more and more, there are these AI itinerary builders, you know, whether it's, you know, some of the big online, ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Now look right Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: travel sellers like TripAdvisor or something like that. And even some of the big hotel chains are rolling out itinerary builders. so differentiating what they're doing is very, tested them out and they're okay. mean, if you're not, you're getting still, it's pretty limited. The personalization is and the quality, for example, the very best guides, ⁓ The best guides, whether it's any country, they don't want to be on the online platforms because the online platforms take up to 30 % of their money. And so they prefer to deal with ⁓ agencies ⁓ or maybe they even meet customers because of an online forum or something like that. And so then they're making more money and they have a direct connection. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. ⁓ Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: And so in our case, we never asked the guides for a discount. We never asked the guides for a commission. like, look, we'll pay you. As long as you do a good job, if you're a top guide and our customers are happy, we're happy to pay the good wages because we appreciate the guides and that kind of thing. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, awesome. I was just diving deeper because it feels like there is enough ⁓ area for some productized services in terms of AI agents. Because the problem of AI agents, from what I hear a lot, they cannot provide quality, you cannot rely. But you cannot always rely on human also. Yeah, they cannot provide the depths of knowledge. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Maybe, yeah. Yeah, that's true. Oleksij Rak: But if some company like yours has some shared knowledge that you have as a company, cumulative knowledge, and if somehow it can be fed into some tool set, AI agent, whatever, and it can help you out in building these itineraries at good enough quality that in the end some human can just sign off, probably it makes sense. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, it could definitely be helpful. Of course, I think there's also a case for the hybrid model where you have, maybe you have an AI model that does a rapid iteration and then the human, then you're able to have the conversation. Because usually the first, no one is happy with the first iteration. They may be kind of happy, but we always want them to be honest and tell us, hey, look, we like. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the carpet. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: seven of the of ten days, but there's three days where we're not really excited. I say, great. Thank you. You know, I want to know that. Let's give you we've got a lot of other options that we can we can offer, you know, in in Spain, Portugal and Morocco. So. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Awesome, Before jumping into market trends, maybe one last question regarding the operation itself. What usually breaks in terms of operation, in terms of preparing the itinerary for the guest and the next probably step is like executing the itinerary. What usually breaks in each of these steps? Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: You know, honestly, initially it would have been, you know, back 20 years ago, the hardest part was finding the A team. I don't know if that's an American term. don't know if everyone says, do you know, is that international too? So finding the A players, know, the high end players. Like if you're building, if you're trying to have an international, like I like soccer, okay. So if I have a soccer team and I want to win, you know, Oleksij Rak: football. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Exactly. You you're trying to build the team and you're trying to find the elite players. And then one thing is you find the player with talent, but then maybe they're not consistent and maybe they're not disciplined and maybe they're going out drinking every night. And so they get injured a lot because they're not sleeping. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. And A-Team does not scale really well, you know. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, exactly. So that was the hardest part was finding the best, the guides that not only are really good with you, but they're good with everybody. And even if they're professionals, you know, they're going to show up, even if they're tired and their kids were awake and sick at night, they're still going to do a good job because they care and they care about the customer, not just trying to have big ego and, and say how smart, you know, how smart I am because I know all this history and blah, blah, you know, so We're looking for the guides that have empathy and they have, you they have the head, but they have the heart. So that was the challenge, but we've got that pretty, you know, pretty well. ⁓ We're very, very happy with our guides around Spain, Portugal, Morocco. So ⁓ the main challenge now is just getting, ⁓ we always, we have only three countries. So ⁓ once people travel those three countries, we don't really have anything else for them. Although we were. We are offering Italy to our private clients, but that's still a little limited. we need lead generation, and we want to reach more people so we can help more people have amazing vacations. Oleksij Rak: So it's rather the lead generation that breaks, not the itinerary preparation. So you fix that side of the business. And where do the majority of leads come to you from? Because Google got broken a bit recently. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, at this point, at this point. Yeah, so are we. Yeah, it was definitely more challenging now. we're still getting Google is still probably like 50%. It ⁓ used to be like 80%. And ⁓ so we're getting a lot, fortunately, lot of work of referrals from past customers. ⁓ And word of mouth advertising, some people call it and then repeat customers. So we have a lot of customers that repeat and Spain is actually 1.7 times bigger than Italy. And so it's bigger than most Americans think. And so there's a lot of regional opportunities for amazing, you know, amazing travel experiences in Spain. And so a lot of Americans are starting to come to Spain. know, maybe they do Andalucía down south, then maybe they do, you know, they do Madrid and Barcelona and the areas around Madrid and Barcelona. That could easily be a week. And then maybe they do the wine countries of northern Spain or the national parks of northern Spain or the Pyrenees Mountains. have a wonderful partner who lives in the Pyrenees and has a small island. He's been guiding there for 25 years and he could do everything from fly fishing to ski, know, skiing in the winter to hiking in the summer. ⁓ there's a lot. Yeah, that's a little bit about Oleksij Rak: Yeah, awesome, So with regards to like market trends, switching to them, what do you see that has changed in the industry over the last couple of years? Probably post-COVID. You're operating for quite a long time, so you should be seeing some change. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, well, you know, post COVID, ⁓ Spain was already in the top five over the last 10 years, the top five in the world with, know, tourism statistics, ⁓ incoming tourism. So with, you know, with Italy, with Italy, with France, ⁓ with USA. ⁓ And ⁓ but it just we've jumped up last. In the last two years, on which statistics, ⁓ hit almost 95 million visitors last year. so that's probably, depending on which statistics, it's either first or second destination in the world. ⁓ that's ⁓ another challenge is avoiding overtourism and avoiding... So the market's changed. There's more people coming here and also Portugal. Portugal is much smaller. But when you go to Lisbon, when you go to Porto in the north of Port of or the Algarve coast in the summer, it's just packed, really packed. And then if you get the crew, also the cruise ships coming in. And so ⁓ it's it's it gets it makes the quality of the experience frankly more challenging to. ⁓ So what we try to do is go off the beaten path and go into into areas that are really beautiful, that aren't really well known. Oleksij Rak: them. Yeah. like dupes yeah yeah yeah I heard the terms if you are not going to Lake Como you're going to all the nearby lakes because visitors can get the same experience but less crowded and cheaper Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Dukes, that's the word. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, the... Yes, yes. Oleksij Rak: So do you have this like new destinations emerging in Spain and in Portugal? Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: So, mean sort of the dupes off the beaten path kind of places? Yeah, we have, ⁓ for example, in Spain, ⁓ one that's become really, really popular is it's a region ⁓ on the west of Spain between, if you're looking at a map between Lisbon and Madrid, and then Seville in the south of Spain, Seville's in the southwest. So if you go from Seville up, there's a region called Extremadurra. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: And Extremadura has more ⁓ animals than people. Like a lot of places in Europe, know, because everyone is going to the cities. Spain is really densely populated, and Portugal too, in the cities. ⁓ But the countryside is becoming... For young people, they don't want to live in the countryside, they don't want to live in the small town. prefer, generally, not all of them, but a lot of them prefer to go to the larger cities, right? Oleksij Rak: Hmm. Okay. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: So this region is one that's, it has a Roman, former Roman capital city there that's a UNESCO World Heritage Site called Merida. It has ⁓ another medieval walled city that has been in all the movies, a lot of historic movies. It was in Game of Thrones and the sequel of Game of Thrones. ⁓ Also it's called Cascasus. Oleksij Rak: . Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: And so people love that area. So that's that's one that we're seeing a lot of people enjoying in Spain. And then, ironically, in Portugal, an area that is similar to that region, they actually are neighbors. It's called the Alentejo. And so the Alentejo in Portugal is east of ⁓ east of Lisbon. And it's also it's a similar a rural rustic area with a Oleksij Rak: Thank Okay. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: where they have a lot ⁓ of sheep, a lot of livestock. ⁓ have wine, both those regions have wine country, they have wine production, they have cheese production, they produce sausages and cured ham, which is wonderful in Spain and Portugal. ⁓ And they also produce ⁓ cork ⁓ that you can find in the wine bottles. Portugal is one of the biggest producers of cork. Oleksij Rak: I hear you're a wine lover, so am ⁓ I. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: actually in the world and Spain is in the top 10 for cork. So kind of quirky, kind of different, but people enjoy it. Do you enjoy wine yourself? Yeah? Okay, well when you come to Spain, wine is, ⁓ I'll invite you to one of my favorite places and we'll share a ⁓ something, something good. Oleksij Rak: ⁓ yeah, a lot. for For sure, for sure. Like what else do you see in terms of trends? Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: So other trends, ⁓ well, we're seeing a lot more interest in like the cooking experiences, the food, you know, the hands-on food and wine experiences. So when I got to Spain, there was almost none of that. No one that was, no one was doing cooking classes or tapas tours ⁓ and, you know, or much less food tours or going to or market visits. It just almost didn't happen. I mean, unless you had a friend that would take you. And I remember a friend of mine that I made in Madrid. And when I got here, took me to the markets and I loved, I've always loved food. So for me, it was great. And my friend was like, I didn't think anybody would like this. It's just a boring market. I'm saying, no, this is like really cool because I like food and I like to see, you know, I like to know where it came from. And I want to I like to see the guy cutting it up and I prefer that than going to the big box supermarket. And I think a lot of Americans are appreciating that because we don't really have that opportunity to see the food market so much. mean, with exceptions. There are some exceptions, but in general, most Americans have never been to a proper food market like that. Oleksij Rak: It's like traveling for experiences. I recently heard that there should be some added value on top of just transactional travel. A few people mentioned already. Somebody is building communities on top, somebody is adding some social layer on top of just travel. Somebody is deep into personalized experiences. What do you see in the terms? So we already mentioned just like going to food markets, it's better than going to see some, I don't know, Eiffel Tower. But do you see any kind of trend around that? What are visitors tending to have more than just booking a hotel and seeing something big? Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, well, one of the things I mean, people are asking us is just how can we how can we beat the crowds? We don't want to stand in line. So, you know, what? Of course, we're we've got a few a few things we like any agency we could pre book tickets, you know, and there's there's kind of some. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Okay. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: I think it's a little misleading sometimes. Like you could go online and you could find these skip the line tickets for everything. The thing is, there's like 10 different online sellers of like skip the line tickets. So at the end of the day, if everybody has this, you know, skip the line ticket, nobody is skipping the line. It's just a separate door. So the only way you can really skip the line are and it still depends on the crowd inside the monument. So this is where it gets a little tricky. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: So there's certain, if you have, if you have an, let's say a, you know, a palace or a mansion that everyone wants to see, which happens, you know, in many places and there's bus and you happen to have like four bus tours that are with 30, 40 people each and they're all inside. And then they have everyone has their guy and the guides are talking and blah, blah. Well, no one else can maybe because the place is small and they make there's just not physically enough space and they're very and they're usually slow. There there are people that maybe have some mobility issues and, know, it's just what it is, what it is. So you can't really you couldn't really guarantee skip the line if you were going ⁓ and you get stuck behind those bus tours. Right. Oleksij Rak: . Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: So the only way you can really be sure to do it is if you do it like an after hours visit. And of course that costs a lot more, but that is an option that if someone really wants to skip the line, we'll say, we can do the after hours visit and then there's no bus tours there. people ask about that. The other thing people are asking us about is doing something active, even if they're not really, really active, just eating and sightseeing after a while, they like the variety of getting out in nature and doing something active in a beautiful place. So that would be another one. Oleksij Rak: Some kind of alnistarism or whatever Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, it's a lot of times just walking, know, maybe it's trail walking, some light hiking, something like that. you know, on occasion, people ask for like yoga, you know, with a yoga teacher outdoors somewhere. ⁓ Sometimes we're just seeing people wanting to do things with doing things that are a little different, people who are artistically Oleksij Rak: or not. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: inclined or interested or have kids. And sometimes maybe the kids don't really know about art, but they're still young enough where they're open to try new things. Right. And so people will also ask us to can you can we get some time with an artist and we can do like a little a workshop with the kids can draw and the people can make something so or crafts workshops. So we're able to. We know like the artisan craftsmen ⁓ who are doing, who are really artisans. They're not just, you know, selling something, some, you know, some of the stores will sell like these souvenirs that are supposed to be from Portugal or Spain or Morocco, but they're actually from, made in China, you know. Oleksij Rak: So these are kind of personalized experiences and look something really local, unique, and they want to participate in Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, yeah, they want to feel, I think people want to feel like they're doing something that's connected to the place, you know, that it's authentic. Oleksij Rak: local community. Authentic, yeah, yeah, authenticity. It makes a lot of sense. You mentioned before the recording, but still like, what's limiting the growth nowadays? What's the biggest limiting factor and what's... Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, for us, for us, the we've got like since we've been doing this so long and we've we've got we have the guides, we have, you know, the logistics to make the logistics seamless. ⁓ We've got all the operational side. We're we're at a really high level. So the limiting factor for us is just we need more. We need more people to know about what we're doing because, you know, we only have the four we have the really the four countries now. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Yep. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: And so that's our, just getting the word out and getting more people to try out our, what we're doing. so that's where it is right now. Oleksij Rak: And what are you doing for that? I'm hearing people like are doing a lot of social presence, social media, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, working with influencers, ⁓ so Instagram influencers. Are you doing any of that? Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: A little bit, probably not enough. Probably not enough. Oleksij Rak: I've seen that you are doing that personally, so you have a lot of videos. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, I mean, this was one of the reasons I was excited to talk to you because I haven't done in the past. had some people ask me about interviews and I never did them. And ⁓ maybe and I probably should have, but I thought, you know, well, let me talk. I would like to see how this goes. And I'm really having a great time talking to you. And so this is a fun conversation. Oleksij Rak: And what else are you doing? How do you try to grow your acquisition channels? I'm also interested personally because I'm interested for my own business. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: No! Yes! Yeah, think the main thing is that's been working for us and not doing enough of it. It's just staying in contact with past customers, past clients and not trying to sell them, not just saying, hey, I've got this new thing in here. Why don't you buy it? I'm just doing a real personal outreach. you know, John, you ⁓ I just thought about you and your wife, you know, when because I was in this place and ⁓ and it was something I thought you might like, you know, and hope you're doing well or something like that. And maybe, you know, just little things like that. And ⁓ and then, you know, it keeps I think that's just human just being trying to be human and make maintain a relationship. It's is ⁓ I think it's helpful if it's real for you. Oleksij Rak: But you had like thousands of guests over the years of operations. So it's quite hard to be part of this with each of them. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, there's, it is hard to stay in touch with all of them. So I guess I'm going more from the ones that like, do try to get out of the office ⁓ when I can. And I probably only meet 20, maybe 10 or 20 % of the customers. And maybe we just have a coffee or something. Or maybe, you know, maybe it's just, maybe I'll go to the hotel and just say hello and bring them a bottle of wine as a gift or something, you know. So the people that I've met, it's easier to reach out to, find, you know? Oleksij Rak: We also tried the tactic to send a bottle of wine. It works, know, people do remember us. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, do you mean when they were visiting? You mean when they were on the trip or do you mean when they were at home? Oleksij Rak: Oh, just sending them over post, so somebody was having some wine tasting and we were like, do you have Ukrainian wines? they were like, no, we good wines here. you know, yeah, it makes sense. Absolutely. You know, I recently heard a guy saying that he's not building Kefano, also a travel agent, you know. from US, but he is operating in US. I'm not building a funnel. I'm trying to build a flywheel. I'm trying that people spread out the words of Mao about my services and that they come back themselves and they bring their friends either. So, know, the self-feeding funnel. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: I like that. Right. Yeah, can you? Yeah, that's interesting. That's interesting. Oleksij Rak: And this concept resonated with me, but you need to like first, need to deliver quality service from what they hear you do. And we also do like my company does. And second, you need to somehow continuously keep in touch with them and keep like, and have a personal touch with these people. In my case, it's probably easier because we do not have that many. We have big clients and but we have a bit limited number of them. It's like tens of them, not thousands as you do in your... Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yes. Right, yeah, we've got over 15,000. Oleksij Rak: it ⁓ yes. if you have like, I'm thinking now, if you have some information about them, when they came, who they are, what they did, where they traveled, you can fit it into some AI algorithm, whatever, and try to address them. Hey, John, we met like 10 years ago, five years ago. We still remember and stuff and stuff. by the way, we have some news, something new open for you. This may be a good feedback into the funnel. So this kind of flywheel, the concept of flywheel that I heard. It did resonate with me and I'm trying to share it, trying to be useful here. ⁓ Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, I like that. I like that. That's a simple, that's a great idea. I just connected that idea. I think what you said, what I understood was like the end, if you look at the date of the travel on the itinerary, which we have all that, you you create just the system. I could probably do it with like Claude Cowork or something. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: and just say, hey, give me a list of all the travel dates for all these customers. And then look at like the anniversary. like, oh, hey, you were here in 2015 and you were in Portugal. Oleksij Rak: And by the way, we have a similar tool. Something quite different in Morocco. And you think you might like it. So it might make sense for you, like speaking about client integration. Awesome. Glad to be useful a bit. So with regards to market trends, coming back to it, where do you see it moving in coming? Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think it's real. Yeah, that's... Yeah, no, absolutely. Oleksij Rak: few years. Maybe it is too hard to guess about a few years, maybe in coming six, 12 months, 18 months. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: We'll back. Well, think, you know, part of there's the white elephant in the room. It's not really an elephant. But the whole situation with the Middle East is certainly ⁓ concerning, you know, because especially, you know, first, mean, you know, first the human aspect of it. mean, it's terrible to see, you know, to see wars anywhere, whether it's Ukraine, Iran, anywhere. you know, we feel for all those people who are, you know, those Oleksij Rak: You Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: civilians especially, but everyone who's impacted by that. And then there's the effect on the travel industry, which kind of pales in comparison. I feel kind of callous complaining about it when I think about the people that are living in those countries. But ⁓ anyway, it is an issue because people see the airline ⁓ airlines getting our flights getting canceled and things like that. And so they're more nervous. You're like right now I've got, you know, larger amount of people who are who are interested, but they're not ready to book because they want, you know, they don't want to book and then have maybe the airline it's not working or maybe there's some other or maybe things get, you know, the people the unexpected or the the fear of the unknown. And they're probably watching the news too much, 24-7. And the news always tries to scare people more and more and keep them watching. So that's certainly an issue right now in the short term. ⁓ And we're optimistic. Hopefully, there'll be some solutions and some peaceful solutions for all those situations. But anyway, that is a factor. Other than that, what we're seeing is probably the bigger companies ⁓ you know anywhere ⁓ or you know seem to have taken more of the it seems like they have more of the market although i don't have you know exact statistics but when i look at google search when i look at you know just do a few searches you know it looks like the bigger ⁓ tourism companies are showing up more and more in in some of the searches that i do so that would probably ⁓ which sort of makes sense they've got you know they've got teams of marketing experts and teams of developers, know, and, Oleksij Rak: It's not only that, it's about Google. That's what we noticed. Two years ago, Google switched, when fighting with AI, they switched to only bigger brands. All of a sudden, Reddit became number one platform in travel. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah. What was the number one I missed that the name of that platform was. ⁓ yeah, OK, yeah, OK. Oleksij Rak: ⁓ Reddit. So whatever you search in travel, Reddit is within the top five. So all of a sudden, Google is sending all the traffic to Reddit. And then there are big names who have reputation and who Google can be confident that they are not fake. And otherwise, Google fighting with AI, they were so afraid that... ⁓ Google's main goal is to provide the fastest and best answer to the user and they don't really care about the providers of that answer. So that's why Google AI plus big names, it's all the top of the Google search results. Yeah, that's the dominance from Google's side. That's why AI LLMs is probably one of the answers for other players. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Oleksij Rak: That's at least what I felt with our platform. So all of a sudden we're just losing. We lost a lot of traffic from Google. But yeah, also hear you that, ⁓ and I also heard from other guys that I interviewed that they are afraid of big platforms as they will just dominate the market because it's quite especially... with tours, with anything, know, I was chatting with a lady who is doing yachts, yachts around Mediterranean. And she said like, anybody like can post photos of great yachts and, nobody, the guest when he is trying to book something, he doesn't really know what level of service and what level of personalization. That's why bigger platforms have a tendency to just dominate the market because as you said, they have better marketing people, better engineers and so on. How would you fight with that? Because you do provide personalized service, you do provide great experience. That's something that ⁓ global OTA cannot, online travel agency cannot provide. but the visit of your guest or your potential guest does not know that you do provide that better service. How would you fight with that? Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Right. Right. Unless you're a referral. That's the thing. That's where the relationship, think, is like one of the keys to like, keeping, know, staying to competing with the, you know, with the bigger online platforms. And the other is the other, which is on my list of things to do, which I do some, I have done a little bit of, but it's, I think it's to go and make content with like local Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: interesting local people. So whether it's a winemaker or a chef or an artisan or even, you know, manager of a hotel, someone who likes to, doesn't mind talking on your camera, you know, making a quick video. I think those are ways that, and I think also with the algorithm, the algorithm will, would probably find that interesting. It's another external ⁓ an external, you know, proof that you're actually in your destination. And I think the argument there is really simple. If you're actually really know your destination, you're not doing 50 countries. I mean, I always tell people, listen, the big online agencies do a great, they do a very good job. But if you really want to go deeper than the mass market, you need to find someone local, someone who lives in the destination or have because ⁓ there's no way they could know. all and have the relationships in the destination that we have. So I think relationships. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Yeah, makes sense. And for what you mentioned, like interviews with local people, with local hotels and stuff, it makes you, it adds like to your authority and it makes you look like an expert in that field. So, so you're not a global player, but you're local and you're expert on the local field. So yeah, it really makes sense. That's also what I'm hearing like you're probably, yeah, the third time I'm hearing. like building your expertise in the niche you're working in and showing it here. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, it's just shooing it. Yeah, because it's easy to be an invisible expert. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. That's one of the reasons I'm trying to run this podcast because we do work in the industry for 15 years, but nobody knows. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, I'm saying the same thing. Same thing. mean, a few people. So, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. In fact, someone someone suggested to me to do the same. Actually, two times two people have suggested they told me, you know, to do a podcast so that I could, you know, doing what you're so, you know, hats off to you. It's a great, great idea. Maybe I'll start. Maybe I should start a podcast and you could be my my guest. Oleksij Rak: Awesome, for sure. Awesome. That's a really great discussion. Thanks a lot for it. It's closing to one hour. It's nearing to one hour. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: ⁓ Time is going very fast so that's good sign. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, and it was a great and quite intense discussion about a lot of different topics. So thanks a lot for this discussion. Like before we wrap it up, do you have anything else to add on top of Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: I would just say if anyone out there is thinking about going somewhere, doing something, just remember life is short and ⁓ plan your trip wherever it is and go do it. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, that's also my suggestion. Thanks, Dan, for the discussion and good luck with... Yeah. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Yeah, thank you. Thank you. This is great. You've had very, very good questions and you're very so I think you're you're going to have a bright future with these with the shows because you're it's nice to ⁓ your questions are really good, thoughtful and and provoke good. ⁓ You made me think about a lot of things that I had forgotten about, I think so. Oleksij Rak: Thanks. I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thanks for your time and have a great day. Dan OBeirne - Magical P.Travel: Okay. Oleksij Rak: Yeah.